3 ms·

I know next to nothing about this field, but I just sort of brute-forced my way through the OP paper with the help of wikipedia. It's a painful process. :-)

I know next to nothing about this field, but I just sort of brute-forced my way through the OP paper with the help of wikipedia. It's a painful process. :-) But it has piqued my curiosity about the field. Are there any good introductory books/websites for the curious layman to get a grounding?

skosuri 13y ago
Depends on what level. Wikipedia is actually quite good for this sort of thing. The classic book as a basic overview of molecular biology in general is the Molecular Biology of the Cell [1]. A really cool website to look at on cutting edge studies such as these is the ENCODE consortium's publications in Nature [2]. They simultaneously published 30 papers last year, and this is a really cool meta page that explains the ENCODE project and what they found. [1]. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/ [2]. http://www.nature.com/encode/ http://www.nature.com/encode/
skosuri 13y ago
Oh and for Codon usage in general, a really good review can be found here [1]. [1]. http://people.cs.vt.edu/~heath/VTMENA/CodonBias/PlotkinKudla_NatureReviewsGenetics_2011.pdf http://people.cs.vt.edu/~heath/VTMENA/CodonBias/PlotkinKudla...
mvleming 13y ago
The Machinery of Life [1] is a fantastic book, I was one of those curious laymen and boy did it saturate my thirst for learning about microbiology. I think it's close to the time I read it again. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Life-David-Goodsell/dp/0387849246 http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Life-David-Goodsell/dp/0... Edit: Whoops, no Markdown support. Revised link to use footnote.
wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
Robert Sapolsky[0] has his Stanford course on human behavioral biology on youtube, almost in its entirety. The whole course is very accessible and much broader than the topic here, but if you wanna go straight for the molecular genetics section, it's parts 4 & 5. Amazing lecturer. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky
smartial_arts 13y ago
"Tales from Genome" course on Udacity is pretty awesome, although at times painfully anal/detailed with regards to assignments. I think you can skip those, though. https://www.udacity.com/course/bio110 https://www.udacity.com/course/bio110

skosuri 13y ago

Depends on what level. Wikipedia is actually quite good for this sort of thing. The classic book as a basic overview of molecular biology in general is the Molecular Biology of the Cell [1]. A really cool website to look at on cutting edge studies such as these is the ENCODE consortium's publications in Nature [2]. They simultaneously published 30 papers last year, and this is a really cool meta page that explains the ENCODE project and what they found. [1]. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/ [2]. http://www.nature.com/encode/ http://www.nature.com/encode/

skosuri 13y ago

Oh and for Codon usage in general, a really good review can be found here [1]. [1]. http://people.cs.vt.edu/~heath/VTMENA/CodonBias/PlotkinKudla_NatureReviewsGenetics_2011.pdf http://people.cs.vt.edu/~heath/VTMENA/CodonBias/PlotkinKudla...

mvleming 13y ago

The Machinery of Life [1] is a fantastic book, I was one of those curious laymen and boy did it saturate my thirst for learning about microbiology. I think it's close to the time I read it again. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Life-David-Goodsell/dp/0387849246 http://www.amazon.com/The-Machinery-Life-David-Goodsell/dp/0... Edit: Whoops, no Markdown support. Revised link to use footnote.

wrongc0ntinent 13y ago

Robert Sapolsky[0] has his Stanford course on human behavioral biology on youtube, almost in its entirety. The whole course is very accessible and much broader than the topic here, but if you wanna go straight for the molecular genetics section, it's parts 4 & 5. Amazing lecturer. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky

smartial_arts 13y ago

"Tales from Genome" course on Udacity is pretty awesome, although at times painfully anal/detailed with regards to assignments. I think you can skip those, though. https://www.udacity.com/course/bio110 https://www.udacity.com/course/bio110