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| By: Frank Scarcello ISBN: Publisher: Laurentian Business Publishing, Inc. Release Date: 30 July, 2005 Bioscience book rank: | ||
| By: Andy Killion ISBN: Publisher: Thomson Gale Release Date: 14 July, 2007 Bioscience book rank: | ||
| By: Yvette P. Conley, Mindy B. Tinkle ISBN: Publisher: Thomson Gale Release Date: 26 March, 2007 Bioscience book rank: | ||
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| By: Melvin I. Simon, Jeremy Thorner, Scott D. Emr, John N. Abelson ISBN: 012182229X Publisher: Academic Press Release Date: September, 2000 Bioscience book rank: 2586558 | ||
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| By: Kevin McMahon ISBN: 1413474241 Publisher: Xlibris Corporation Release Date: 18 March, 2005 Bioscience book rank: 3146146 | Kevin McMahon's first major work shows his skill at dancing between and within biological science, genetics, philosophy of theology, theology, and creativity. The novel is heavily influenced by Christian teleology with some epistemology as a guide, but the reader will not be aware of them except as s/he too dances through a fast moving, highly entertaining and poignant combination of them. The last 50 pages rivet the reader so much that one's saccadic pace and page turning move more rapidly than neurons are supposed to fire. I highly recommend this work to any reader, and especially recommend it to those who are trying to keep abreast of stem cell implications for the future. James McMahon PsyD, PhD, ThD, ScD, Island Hts NJ and Naples FL (perhaps a 454th cousin of the author!) A pair of researchers discovers independently two biotechnological advances that seem promising to help mankind, but there chance meeting with a brilliant but power hungry financier, leads to a chain of events nobody, except Maria, our clever, feisty but devout heroine, could have predicted. "Garments of Skin" is a mixture of biotechnology, philosophy, religion, and geo-political affairs in a believable, intriguing, and fascinating book. "Garments of Skin", by Kevin D. McMahon, presents the reader with a not-too-distant future in which a U.S.-based biotechnology firm, Chimaera Inc., develops a stem-cell therapy that cures a wide range of medical disorders and greatly increases the human life span. In the course of the novel, we see how this breakthrough has huge ramifications in government, society, and religious institutions. As an eager public awaits the incredible benefits of this therapy, an unforseen consequence occurs: at death, the Chimaeric patient's soul is trapped in the body (fused to the "garments of skin"), and exists alone and in despair. What was once hailed as a "brave new world", free of injury, disease and aging, now has the potential to become a "genomic apocalypse". <br /> One of the major achievements of this novel is in how the author skillfully makes the incredible events seem so believable, and, in some cases, inevitable. The characters are portrayed as complex and fallible individuals, motivated by greed, altruism, high ideals, lust for power, and, in one instance, love for humanity that results in a supreme act of self-sacrifice. The intricate details of genomic science, so crucial to our understanding of the story, are presented in such a way as to be easily grasped by individuals such as myself who have little scientific backround (the illustrations are particularly helpful). The amount of historical, theological, scientific and cultural information woven into this book is amazing, as the story takes the reader from Vatican City to Moscow, and from the oval office in Washington, D.C. to the dense jungles of Mexico. The novel functions quite well as an action-based, suspenseful thriller, a very good "read", but it is in the questions it raises involving certain ethical, moral and religious ideas that the work achieves real depth and profundity. For example, who should receive the Chimaeric technology - the old or the young, the healthy or the infirmed, the rich or the poor? Also, what should be the role of the government in this process? Would government regulation of this technology result in a benevolent democracy, or Big Brother? More importantly, the novel questions our very idea of "what it means to be human", i.e., are we simply a collection of materials to be manipulated in the quest for "self-actualization", or are we created in the image of God, and as such, off-limits to human tampering? Does Chimaeric technology bring us into a new Garden of Eden, where we can become "like God" instead of, as Christians, participating in God's divine nature? I was particularly interested when the novel related what Eastern Orthodox theology has to say on this subject: how God, after the events in the Garden of Eden, chose to clothe mankind in in "garments of skin" (i.e., biological life), in order to preserve our souls. Thus, at death, the soul is released and achieves union with God. In doing so, God allowed death to limit the consequences of sin, "that evil might not become immortal". As a Christian, I appreciated the fact that the theology in the novel never comes across as "preachy" or contrived; in fact, the opposing viewpoints of the Church and Chimaera, Inc. are presented in such a way that the reader is able to appreciate the arguments of each side, and in so doing, achieve his or her own conclusions. <br /> I think that "Garments of Skin" is a remarkable achievement - a highly entertaining, fast-paced narrative whose events are credible but rarely predictable, and a challenging, thought-provoking work that forces us to reassess our views concerning the very nature of our humanity. I confess that, until now, I have not followed the stem-cell debate very closely, but this novel has alerted me to the relevance of that discourse. As one might say, "you may not be interested in genomic therapy, but genomic therapy is interested in you". I look forward to reading "Daughter of Abraham", McMahon's sequel to "Garments of Skin", as this intriguing and profound story continues. | |
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| By: Dario Leister ISBN: 1560229985 Publisher: CRC Press Release Date: 23 December, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 1917286 | As the editor of this book explains in the preface, `functional genomics' is an extension of the term `genomics', with the latter used to designate the mapping and sequencing of genomes. Functional genomics, on the other hand, assumes the existence of a complete genome sequence, and then attempts to elucidate the functional properties of each gene. Motivated by the completion of the sequencing of the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana in 2000, the authors of the articles in this book discuss the more recent developments in plant functional genomics. Even though it is written for experts in the field, with some concentrated effort and a thorough perusal of the references, non-experts (such as this reviewer) who are curious about these developments should find the book worthwhile. Because of the interests of this reviewer, which lie predominantly in the biochemistry and biology of photosynthesis, and the genetic engineering of the chloroplast, the review will be restricted to the two articles that discuss these topics. <br /> <br />In the article `Chloroplast Proteomics' by Klaas J. van Wijk, the author believes that the study of the proteome of plastids is advantageous because of the reduced complexity of the problem, if compared to the proteomics of a total cell. The author illustrates this reductionist philosophy in the dividing up of the chloroplast proteome into six different "subproteomes" so as to make the identification and characterization of proteins more straightforward. These subproteomes are the inner and outer envelope, the soluble stroma, the tight and loose peripheral thylakoids, the soluble lumen, and the integral membrane. This division, the author believes, makes experimental determination of the proteins much more straightforward. He focuses his attention in the article on those experimental techniques that allow large sets of proteins to be predicted. Emphasis is placed on the way in which proteomics has contributed to the understanding of the biology of plastids. The author also takes great care in distinguishing large-scale transcript analysis from proteomic analysis, believing that both approaches are complementary, and gives references to the literature that support this viewpoint. <br /> <br />The role of statistical and mathematical techniques in proteomics, such as the use of hidden Markov models, is readily apparent in the article. Noting that the majority of the plastid proteome is encoded by the nuclear genome with the proteins being synthesized as precursor proteins with N-terminal `cleavable transit peptides' (cTPs), the author lists a few Websites for obtaining software, such as TargetP and Predotar, to identify cTPs and also lists other predictors and plastid proteomics databases cited in the chapter. <br /> <br />There are many very interesting facts reported in the chapter. One of these concerns the phylogenetic analysis of the proteome of Arabidopsis thaliana, which reveals that it has its origins in bacteria, but during the long process of evolution many other genes that encode for plastid proteins were acquired. Another concerns the use of hidden Markov models as predictors for alpha-helical transmembranes. Still another concerns the experimental techniques used for the identification and characterization of the plastid proteome, such as mass spectrometry, cyclotron resonance, and electrophoresis. Readers with knowledge of physics will certainly appreciate the discussion of these techniques. <br /> <br />In the article `Functional Characterization of the Photosynthetic Apparatus in Arabidopsis thaliana' by H. V. Scheller, C. Lunde, A. Haldrup, and P. E. Jensen, the authors emphasize that a substantial number of the genes of a plant, around ten percent, are involved in photosynthesis, and interestingly, have their origins in cyanobacteria. They are careful to point out both the advantages and disadvantages in using Arabidopsis to study photosynthesis, with the main advantage clearly being the availability of its complete genome. The primary focus of the article is on the function of proteins in the thylakoid membrane and the authors do not discuss stromal processes or transport processes in the chloroplast. <br /> <br />For the photosystem II (PSII) the authors give a list of the genes making up this system. They include in this list the location of the gene, i.e. whether it is in the nuclear or plastid genome, the protein for which it encodes, its molecular mass, its major function, and the accession number. Those readers interested in studying the effects on photosynthesis due to the switching off of these genes will find ample discussion in this article, with attention given to the nuclear-encoded subunits. The authors emphasize that not much is known about the chloroplast-encoded PSII proteins in Arabidopsis. <br /> <br />As an example of the effect of the knockout of genes, the authors discuss how the quantum yield of PSII electron transport and oxygen evolution can be decreased by the knockout in one of the psbO genes. They also discuss the destabilization of PSII dimers due to the reduction of the PsbW protein. This discussion is interesting in that no observable change in the phenotype was observed despite a fifty percent reduction in PSII activity. <br /> <br />Still another interesting discussion in this article regards the role of the Lhcb proteins in Arabidopsis, which are involved in light harvesting. For the Lhcb4 and Lhcb5 proteins, the authors describe an experiment in which these two proteins were down-regulated using an antisense approach. It is interesting to note that growth was not affected in the plants lacking Lhcb4 or Lhcb5, but that the PSII content was increased in the antisense plants. The authors conclude from this that the ratio between PSI and PSII is highly optimized in plants. A mutated plant with defects in one photosystem has a large capacity to compensate for the defects. For Lhcb2, the authors discuss an antisense experiment for one of the three lhcb2 genes that resulted in the largest number of gene products being simultaneously suppressed of any other study to date. Interestingly, the thylakoid structure was not affected by these manipulations, only small changes in the antenna size of PSII were observed, and the rate of photosynthesis was only reduced by about fifteen percent. Growth conditions were the same as the wild type in the laboratory, but fitness was considerably decreased under field conditions. | |
| By: RNCOS ISBN: Publisher: Release Date: 01 April, 2006 Bioscience book rank: | ||
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| By: Christian Schwabe ISBN: 1587060442 Publisher: Landes Bioscience Release Date: 01 August, 2001 Bioscience book rank: 2935425 | To overthrow the ruling paradigm in a scientific discipline one needs a much more solid critique than Schwabe offered in this 114-page book. Schwabe thinks it is easy to overthrow Darwinism because all the evidence is against Darwinism and there is no evidence in favour of Darwinism. But anyone trying to do this must not only be an expert on the paradigm at hand, neo-Darwinism, but must also possess a fairly good knowledge of the relevant disciplines, in this case evolutionary biology, genetics, cell-biology, ecology, palaeontology, systematics and developmental biology. Schwabe fails most seriously in the biological disciplines. And chemical reductionism cannot compensate for this. His goal to derive as many as possible properties of life from the laws of chemistry is good mainstream science, and a DNA/gene-centred view is common in the age of genomics. However when organism and its environment entirely disappear from the stage, reductionism is counter-productive. This is especially obvious with his science fiction alternative (embryos in a fresh water pond). At times Schwabe is a good critic of Darwinism, but at other times he just repeats the 15-year-old example of Michael Denton, ignoring that Denton recently adopted common descent and evolution. Multiple origins of life (in a restricted form) is creeping into the textbooks of evolution. To deal with Schwabe's theory kept me busy for months with a mixture of excitement, amazement and a growing disappointment and brought me into every area of biology. It is useful to have an alternative scientific theory for Darwinism, but Schwabe's theory in its extreme form is no viable alternative to natural selection and common descent. Dissenters such as Schwabe maybe critical but not more self-critical than the average mainstream scientist. Both just follow a different paradigm to wherever it leads them. Evolution may have its anomalies and puzzles, I prefer it above science fiction. Gert Korthof | |
| By: UNKNOWN ISBN: Publisher: Business Communications Company, Inc. Release Date: 01 June, 2005 Bioscience book rank: | ||
| By: UNKNOWN ISBN: Publisher: Springer Release Date: Bioscience book rank: 58816 | I bought this book to understand the computer science side of molecular biology. This book gives good treatment of the basics though if you are a programmer and want to get involved straight away, this book will be of little help. <p>This book helped me understand some concepts, and pointed me to some of the tools and databases that are currently in use in the bioinformatics business. | |
Related books in this category:
methods in molecular biology, PCR, RT-PCR and real-time quantitative PCR, Differential Display, recombinant DNA, gene therapy, virus protocols, lentivirus methods, gene targeting, mouse knock-out and knock-in, transgenic technology, phenotyping, gene delivery and transfer, transcriptional regulation, RNA methods, RNA Polymerase, gene expression, protein translation regulation, protein kinase, protein phosphorylation, genomics, genomics methods, epigenetics, DNA methylation, DNA sequencing, RNA interference, microarray
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