Molecular Biology of the Cell 5e - The Problems Book [With CDROM]

If you want to try to understand life, then understanding the cell is central, and this text book is apparently the best and most authoritative introduction to the subject at an advanced level. I suppose that most readers would be serious biology students, most of whom intend to do research either in biology or in a closely connected field like medicine. As for myself, I am a mature scientist in a completely different field (experimental physics), and I was motivated to read this book after being both tantalized and frustrated by superficial layman books. At first I was worried I might not have the background to understand the material, but I was delighted to find that all the concepts are explained carefully from the start. It is an awesome book, revealing life to be extremely rich in complexity while at the same time based on simple logical principles. The recent revolutions in this field, many of which are explained in the text, makes me almost wish I had chosen to work in biology instead of physics.

In the past few years quite a few books on molecular biology and genetics have appeared, and all of these have been exceptionally well-written. Most have been updates of previous editions, and if compared with these, the most recent editions have displayed an enthusiasm and excitement that dwarfs their earlier editions. This book, now in its fourth edition, is an example of one of these, and I believe the reason for their increasing quality is the excitement that biologists are now feeling. This is due no doubt to the incredible strides that have been taken in biology in the last few years. Biologists are with complete justification very excited that they understand in greater detail what life is all about, and are looking forward to an even deeper understanding in the decades ahead. As a non-biologist but one deeply embedded in bioinformatics and certain areas of computational biology, this book served my need to understand in greater detail the underlying biology behind these fields. It is a beautiful book, both from an aesthetic viewpoint and because of its content. The book reads more like a story than a textbook, but the information gain when reading it is considerable, with less entropy than what might be expected from such a deep subject with myriads of terms that must be understood before moving on to others. The author's approach to the book is well-organized, with many accompanying diagrams that illustrate the complicated processes and structures that can occur in the molecular realm. In addition, helpful summaries are put at several places in the book. There are no exercises in this book but there is a workbook that one can purchase separately. Space prohibits a detailed review of such a large book, but some of the more interesting discussions in the book include: 1. The paragraph on the role of sex in bringing about horizontal genetic exchanges within a species. The thinking is that the genomes of modern eubacteria, archaea, and eucaryotes originated in three different "anthologies" of genes that survived from an ancestral pool in which genes were frequently exchanged. This hypothesis is tempting, argue the authors, since it would explain the fact that eucaryotes are similar to archaea in terms of genetic "information-handling" but more similar to eubacteria from a metabolic standpoint. Horizontal gene transfer has become a very important topic of late, due in part to the uproar on bioengineered foods. 2. The suggestion that eucaryotic cells originated as predators, pointing to the presence of mitochondria as one piece of evidence. 3. The entire chapter on proteins, but especially the discussion on protein folding, allosteric enzymes and allosteric transitions. The discussion on protein folding is qualitative but the authors give interesting insights on this topic. In answering the question as to why only a few of the 20^300 different polypeptide chains will be useful to a living organism, they point to natural selection, and the res

I've just finished reading this book and i feel this new edition is even better than it's predecessor, which is already not far from perfect. This well-known textbook is a comprehensive overview of what we have known about molecular cell biology, and what's more important is - every material here are treated very clearly and carefully, and this is where this book really shines - I even believe a layman with some elementary knowledge about chemistry and biology could not only read this book from cover to cover but also actually *understand* them.Both the material and the references are quite up-to-date (not surprising), so don't hesitate to buy if you have the third edition.I give it five stars because:1) the authority is doubtless;2) it's comprehensive, wide in scope;3) the text is written in plain english, thus won't confuse students in the non-english speaking countries;4) the figures are *really* excellent, IMHO better than any others that I have seen in other books;5) the index is nice;and some minor flaws:The typesetting of "List of Topics" is somewhat... odd. There are no page numbers associate with the individual topics in that list too. Also I think the reference sections could be better.So... let it be 4.5 stars.

I'm an amateur biologist, and a professional computer software engineer and product reviewer. A keen interest in the mechanics of genetic expression has drawn me to the beautiful details of cellular mechanics. While this book is everything the other reviewers say (and are qualified to say) it is, let me weigh in on the accompanying CD, which is an area in which I can claim some expertise. The vast majority of CDs bundled with textbooks are afterthoughts -- either an electronic copy of the text, or some lightly related adjunct materials, usually pulled from the public domain. MBotC is different. The CD is nothing short of breathtaking. A technical tour de force, this CD runs on both Mac and Windows, which is no mean feat. It leverages time-tested technologies such as Netscape, Java, and Quicktime to produce stunningly vivid presentations. It performs well, and is rock-solid stable. Beyond flawless delivery, the content itself is brilliantly executed. This is largely original content developed for this book, and tied directly into the text chapter by chapter. You get narrated animations that show dozens of cellular processes in a way that catalyzes learning. Videos capture live microscopy showing ATP synthase rotors spinning, microtubules self-assembling, actin crawling, and mitosis mitoting. An image magnifier lets you browse photomicrographs in detail. Most astounding of all is the seamless incorporation of a molecular viewer, the Chime Java browser plugin, which directly reads and interprets Protein Data Base (PDB) files and displays the models in interactive 3D. The CD includes hundreds of PDB models, including a wonderful reference library of amino acids, nucleotimes, lipids, and sugars. The CD alone is worth hundreds of dollars, just in the labor expended to assemble material from labs around the world and organize it to fit the chapters of the text. I've used numerous of CDs promising to teach molecular biology, and nothing else comes remotely close to the quality and depth of this volume. That you can buy the CD -- with a ten-pound book attached -- for [the price] is simply a miracle. It's a no-brainer for anybody remotely interested in cell biology. If you're one of them, you must buy this!

Molecular Biology of the Cell : The Problems Book is a great book for biology students as well as those interested in really learning the concepts behind the theory. This book is extremely detailed in its questions as it vigorously tests the knowledge learned from it's companion textbook, Molecular Biology of the Cell. This book has tremendously helped in my understanding of the major chapters of the main textbook (chapters 6-end). It provides a thorough breakdown on the types of questions that it asks. For example, the questions in the book are structured by True/False, matching, as well as essay formats. This provides for a varied way of learning the essential material. I highly recommend this book for those students preparing for standardized exams as well as those taking a course in molecular or cell biology.