Customer Reviews

Introduction to Protein Structure

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This book does a great job in introducing all the various nuances of protein structure. Throughout the book specific examples of proteins are given that exhibit features described in the text. One thing that makes the book especially instructive is the large number of illustrations used to explain key points. Usually a motif or domain was illustrated in ribbon schematics as well as with topology diagrams, making it easy to see connectivity within protein structures. I have been working as a protein biochemist for the past several years and recommend this book highly.It is appropriate both for experienced scientists who might want a refresher, or for a beginner who needs a firm foundation in protein structure.

One small thing I encountered several times in the book was redundant sentences, as if the editors missed some things periodically. This is hardly worth mentioning, and did not detract from the overall usefulness of the book.

This book was a pleasant surprise in almost every respect. I found it a gentle, clear exposition of material that can be hugely complicated. The text works upwards from amino acids, the building blocks, through the interactions of shape and chemical affinity, to views of proteins in action. By the time they appear, muscle fibers and virus capsules follow naturally from the discussion. This gives simple, concise descriptions of how proteins' shape emerge from its sequence. It goes on to describe protein control of DNA, to explain virus and muscle structure, and to hint at modern drug design.

'Protein Structure' requires some background in organic chemistry and in the ideas of molecular genetics. For example, you should already be familiar with steric hindrance and with the idea of regulatory regions in DNA. Branden and Tooze reward the prepared reader with a well-considered series of discussions. These include enzyme action, photosynthesis, virus self-assembly, muscle fibers, DNA binding, and more. I had never seen an actual chain of chemical events that turn light into usable chemical energy. This book stepped through it (for a bacterium, at least) in just few paragraphs and drawings. But the whole book is like that - it sustains a remarkable density of information, always in a very readable style.

The text is laid out in a simple and appealing way, and is profusely illustrated. The illustration is one of this book's wonderful strengths. Almost all of the discussion is carried in diagrams as well as in words, and the authors freely use as many different diagrams as needed to make each idea understandable. The illustration style is simple and consistent; most drawings use one of three or four conventions for describing proteins. Almost all of the illustrations seem to be hand-drawn with colored pencil. Still, the corpus of illsutrations is among the most communicative I have seen in any book. Artists aspiring to illustrate science (or to communicate any idea) should read Tufte, then treat this book as a uniquely successful case study.

My only complaint about this book had to do with the quality of its printing. A few pages in my copy have bad register, colors are not consistent from page to page, and the one major photograph is weirdly over-sharpened. I must also admit that I do not need a deep knowledge of protein structure and function - I scanned the book quickly, and read only parts with care. The book repaid that effort richly, and I expect that it will reward more careful readers even more. I'm not a biochemist, but I strongly recommend 'Protein Structure' to anyone at all interested in the topic.

If you are looking for a basic introduction to proteins and their form and function--or if you are looking for a good text to review protein chemistry--there is none better than Branden and Tooze. I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and routinely reccommend this book to everyone from undergraduate students taking biochemistry to graduate students and professors looking to review knowledge they've forgotten. This book has the perfect combination of clear explanations in ordinary english (rather than in complicated jargon) and full-color, easy to interpret diagrams. I fully intend to buy a second copy, since my current copy is perpetually on loan to friends/students. Buy two for yourself!

I used this book for an class in structural biology. I really liked the book because it went into alot of detail about each aspect of protein structure and the drawings were very pertinent to the text. The language is not too technical, so if you don't know much about proteins, you can start from the beginning and not have a problem understanding. They take you through the jargon slowly, so that by the end of the book, you've learned alot and can probably read a journal article in this field.

This review refers to the second edition of this book, issued in 1999. The book, written by a noted crystallographer (Branden) and a molecular biologist (Tooze) noted for science education. Following up on an earlier edition, the present volume takes advantage of the enormous increase in solved protein structures that has occurred in the intervening years. The book is well written, clear, and makes excellent use of contrasting pastel colors to represent three-dimensional objects (proteins) on a two-dimensional page. One rather surprising omission is the lack of stereo views of proteins in a book about structure. These have become quite common in the structural biology literature, and I feel the book would have been strengthened by judicious inclusion of some examples.

The book, which would be suitable for an advanced undergraduate, graduate course or for biologist wishing to delve more into structure, begins with basic amino acid properties. The secondary structure elements of alpha helix and beta sheet are next introduced, along with some of the conventions used to illustrate structure in publications. How these structural elements are formed to build motifs, and motifs in turn are built into complex structures is discussed. Protein folding and flexibility are discussed, and proteins that assist in the process (e.g., chaperones, GroEL-GroES, disulfide isomerases) are highlighted.

The next several chapters deal with DNA structure, DNA recognition by helix-turn-helix motifs, and eukaryotic transcription factors. The various transcription factor families are outlined, with emphasis on their interactions with DNA. Next, the subject of enzyme catalysis is covered, using serine proteases as exemplars. Membrane proteins, signal transduction proteins, fibrous proteins and immune system components all have individual chapters that emphasize structural features in the service of function. There is a chapter on spherical virus assembly and structure. Two general chapters close the book: one on structure prediction and protein engineering and design, and a final chapter on protein structure determination, which deals with X-ray crystallography and NMR methods and studies.

This book is one of the best books that addresses the topic of protein structure. The book answers nearly all the questions that anybody interested to know about protein structure. Meanwhile, the authers provided clear examples about how elucidating a protein structure can hint for its function(example, B-lactoglobulin structure similarity to retinol binding proteins hints for its function as retinol binding protein in the mammals intestine). Besides, the organization of the book chapters made it so easy to read. Above all, the versatile illustrative examples and figures that the authers used make reading this book is really enjoyable for people have the basic background in biochemistry or those who are interested to building skills in biochemistry as well. The chapeters describing prediction of protein structure and methods to determine the protein structrue are really so valuable as a basic introduction about these broad topics. With basic biochemistry skills, this book will be so enjoyable.

This is a great introductory text on protein science. It starts off with the basic chemistry of amino acids and polypeptides and goes from there into higher order structural organization of many proteins of many families. Reading this book allows one to think about protein function being a direct result of what the structure imposes. Although this is not a protein chemistry book, it's a great place to start appreciating how proteins do what they do following some elegant design principles.
The book gives interesting structural examples on how transcription factors use their DNA binding sites to recognize specific genomic sequences. Also, the story of how the voltage gated potassium channel can be orders of magnitude more selective for potassium over sodium is presented clearly. Overall, this book is necessary for any biologist doing protein related work, or anyone who wishes to gain more insight into how these tiny "machines of life" operate.

I used this book a lot for one of my undergraduate courses three years back. It's excellent at explaining the fundamentals of protein structure, it's written very clearly and the diagrams are easy to understand and appropriate. I found it particularly useful when studying immunology, the explanation of immunoglobulin structure, splicing, and mechanism of action was better than some of the other textbooks I used from the library. I finally bought a copy as reference and to aid revision of some basics while applying for research associate positions within the biochemistry field.

This book is very good at explaining the basics of proteins and their structure. Any student who plans on doing any sort of protein research should consider this a must have for their library.

The pictures are colorful and contain valuable easy to understand information. But the information shown is not over-crowded as some texts tend to do. The authors did not try to put too much information into one picture, but split the information between a number of illistrations.

The sections on protein folds, and motifs are a must for any one dealing with any kind of protein-protein, or protein-dna binding interaction. This will help scientists who will be using proteomic information to determine the structure and probable function of their protein when a crystal or NMR structure is not avaiable.

Great book for any biologist, biochemist, or physical chemist.

I bought this book to improve my play on fold.it
I am interested in science but have no qualifications in it.

This book is VERY approachable even for an uneducated person like me.
Also it has improved my understanding of protein structures a lot and my score on fold.it :O)