Customer Reviews

A Primer of Genome Science, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This somewhat understated book may be overlooked based on its title, and yet it represents the best book currently in print to provide a solid overview of the science and issues in genome science, functional and structural genomics, and the subdiscipline proteomics. Chapter 1 describes current progress with mapping genomes, including the human genome and other genomes in plants and animals. Chapter 2 describes sequencing approaches and gene identification. Chapter 3 deals with gene expression and technologies. Chapter 4 focuses on proteomics including brief introductions to 2D-PAGE and mass spectrometry. This chapter also briefly introduces the reader to structural genomics, or the prediction of protein structure based on sequence through threading and modeling. After a chapter on single nucletide polymorphisms and genotyping the book concludes with a chapter on integrating genome studies including the use of in silico approaches.
Although scant in detail in parts, a major strength of the book is the wide coverage given to science of genomics and its offshoots. Overall an excellent course text for undergraduate or early postgraduate students or others interested in these emerging disciplines. I am not aware of any competing texts which such coverage and certainly not at the price of this one.

Every technician and/or PI should own a copy of this text for their lab. With the logical diagrams and full explanation of the text, this book is really condensed and assumes some knowledge of molecular biology. This book does not assume knowledge of genomics, but rather serves as a manual.

Except the computer-aided drug design, this book covers all the basic theory and useful information of bioinformatics. I recommended this book for anyone who needs to use the bioinformatics web, software tools. For the clinical physician, medical student, and molecular biology scientist, this book is very useful. Especially when you have no time to understanding the detail mathematic calculation, it quickly gives you a whole view and introduction.

With the basic science being so new and changing so rapidly, this second edition is timely and welcome. Virtually every chapter has been re-written to bring it up to date. The result is a text suitable for use in upper under grad or beginning grad level course in functional genomics or bioinformatics. The six chapter headings are:

Genome Projects: Organization and Objectives
Genome Sequencing and Annotation
SNPs and Variation
Gene Expression and the Transcriptome
Proteomics and Functional Genomics
Integrative Genomics.

The book is well written and profusely illustrated with color drawings and photographs. The book is closely allied with the web in form of accessable databases and the like which may keep it from going out of date so fast.

With most text books being so expensive, this book is a definite sleeper in the field.

The book is very poorly written and is too difficult to follow to be called a "primer." Authors often focus on actual software tools and how to use them rather than the science behind them.

To be fair, the graphics offered in the book are excellent and sometimes are the only way to understand a difficult concept.

The preface says to be familiar with "the content of a typical 300 level undergraduate course in genetics" -- it should be a definite prerequisite for reading this book.