Customer Reviews

Nucleic Acids: Structures, Properties, and Functions

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This book is a revised edition of the original text by Bloomfield, Crothers, and Tinoco. A previous book written by this team discusses the Physical Chemistry of Nucleic Acids. The team continues in that tradition of good writing here.

It seems that the standard text for the study of nucleic acids is that by Saenger. But this text is also strong, to use either side by side with Saenger, or even on its own.

Illustrations are clear (although, no really pretty pictures except at the very end), and the writing is quite fluid and intelligible. This book, however, is not a book for beginners (ie. a person who's never read up on nucleic acids before). There tends to be some presupposition in the knowledge and technical jargon such that I think it would better serve as a reference for more advanced students and scientists.

The authors are recognized in the scientific world as being experts in their field, so it comes as no surprise that the text is full of good information.

Where the book falls short is as follows. The book is not very even in terms of the topics it covers. Another downside is that the book fails to discuss many of the newer experimental methods and discoveries, and in that sense is more out of date than you would like.

A good way to compensate for the two aforementioned problems is to supplement your reading with a text like Saenger, and to keep up to date with the current journal literature (if you're interested in methods, the first place to look is a place like Meth. Enzym.; if you're interested in reviews and other articles, turn to journals like Cell, Nature, Science, PNAS, and Biochemistry. If you're into more specialized stuff, consider these journals: 1)Nucleic Acids Research, and 2)RNA ).

Good luck.

Authors are well known researchers in the field of nucleic acid biophysics. For detailed review of the book, look at J. Am. Chem. Soc., 122 (46), 11570 (2000).

This is a high level biochemistry and biophysic book with a deep emphasis in nucleic acids.