No comments about General Organic and Biological Chemistry.

5 comments about Structure and Mechanism in Protein Science: A Guide to Enzyme Catalysis and Protein Folding.

1. Man, this book rocked! I took one look at the ribbon structure of ATPase on the cover and said to myself, "Whoa dude! This is, like, phat!" Then I turned the pages and BAM! I was knee deep in protein structure! Like, any first-year biochemist knows its all about the acids, as in amino, and Fersht, he knows his peptides! Oh man, I was on cloud nine! And I've been off my meds for two months now! But you wanna know the real dope? You can't say diddly about function unless you know structure, and that Alan, as in Fersht, dude! Like, he starts you off simple, like, you know, with the "building blocks," like we're a bunch of two-year-olds, and you string 'em together and get all that higher-order structure and stuff, and slowly, ever so slowly, like a mental itch that invades your consciousness and becomes screaming voices telling you to AHHHHHHHHH! So many domains! Too many functional units! No, no, nooooooo! Schiff base? Shift Bass! Ah HA HA HA HA! What do all those K's mean!?! Take me home! Please...



2. The book focuses on enzyme catalysis, stereochemistry of enzyme reactions, determination of rate constant, enzyme kinetics, and protein structure and folding. It would be an ideal reference for the study of protein chemistry. It can serve as the primary text for an advanced course in protein chemistry or a supplement for undergraduate biochemistry text.

   Protein folding has remained one of the most intricate yet less understood process in modern biochemistry. Feersht's treatise of the subject in this book is splendid. The author overviews protein structure and diversity in the opening chapter. What I find really precious about this book is the discussion on protein engineering, forces on folding, and recombinant DNA technology in the context of protein folding.

   Aside from protein chemistry, the chapter on chemical catalysis is excellent in learning more about transition state theory, general acid/base catalysis, covalent catalysis, structure-reactivity relationships, and kinetic isotope effects.




3. If you are studying protein structure, you probably should read this book for reference.

   This is solely my opinion, but I have learned new things and reinforced some old knowledge, as well. The book is well-written, and understandable, without being simplistic.

   Some texts are difficult to understand, or dry, or facile. This is not one of those texts.




4. Hands down the bible of enzyme kinetics!

   Anyone looking to learn more about enzyme kinetics, thermodynamics, structure, and function will find this book clear, thoughtfully written, and at the forefront in the field.




5. With an undergrad degree in chemistry and a year of graduate school (granted, without a focus solely in biochemistry), this text was often difficult for me to follow and gain much from. Though the text contained an impressive breadth of topics, this breadth came at the cost of depth. In my opinion, a textbook should more-or-less stand on its own in providing a clear understanding of a topic. All too often I didn't find this to be the case with the Fersht book. Instead, I often had to consult many of the references listed in the text to obtain sufficient understanding of topics. (Fortunately, the book includes extensive reference lists.) If looking up endless references (many old and sometimes difficult to obtain) is something you enjoy, this book is for you.--If not, forget it!

5 comments about The Venus Week: Discover the Powerful Secret of Your Cycle...at Any Age.

1. The Venus Week is an incredibly liberating read. No longer do I feel a victim to my hormones. I always knew I had this group of days - I call my skinny days - where everything just seems to click. I actually look forward to changes in my cycle because I now know what is coming and why. What a refreshing way to think about the shifts in mood - they actually have a purpose. I have begun to use Dr. Booth's diet and supplement tips as well and I feel like they make a difference. Now I have a great excuse to indulge in my bit of dark chocolate in the evenings - to give me a little boost of Venus! Kudos to this doctor - who is focusing on wellness - not just disease.



2. Dr. Booth delivered my 2nd son 5 1/2 years ago, so I've been getting the information laid down in this book from brief encounters as her patient. I was thrilled and not so terribly surprised when I found that she had published.
   
   A wonderful read. A must read. I wish I had this when I was a teen instead of just now in my late 30s.



3. Dr. Booth is my gynecologist. She told me that she has been working on the research and writing of this book for a very long time. She wanted to help women understand what is going on with their bodies throughtout the decades. The book is excellent and I recommend it for any age. I plan to buy and give copies to several of my friends from ages 20-60. Thank you Dr. Booth.



4. As a happily married male, Dr. Booth's book definitely brought out an unrealized and needed renewal as well as a greater appreciation of the total woman. Of course, I am referring to both the inner and outer beauty.
   
   It was an easy read for someone like me without a medical degree and the vivid testimonials/stories that she shares with the reader keep things light and humorous as well as heartfelt and even a little sad. The scientific/clinical information paired throughout with the true patient cases not only draw you in, but almost makes it challenging to stop reading.
   
   This is definitely something any man who is in a married or dating relationship with a woman should take the time to read if he truly wants to understand his spouse/girlfriend better and to be sensitive to her emotional and physicial cycles.
   
   Best of luck and continued success to Dr. Booth. Hopefully she will write a follow-up in the near future.
   
   C. Schrecker



5. All women have one week of the month where they can feel great about themselves: more attractive, focused, receptive to others - so what is this window of physical health and how can women understand and perhaps take advantage of these physical and emotional changes? THE VENUS WEEK comes from a leading gynecologist who reveals how to manage a body's weekly hormonal shifts to best advantage. From defining a personal Venus Week to mitigating the effects of other phases, any women's health collection will find this an intriguing, hopeful study.

2 comments about Biochemistry Primer for Exercise Science (Primers in Exercise Science).

1. if you're interested in adquiring an easy and understandable base about proteins, carbohydrates and fats this book is a must as well as an indipensable start to understand further readings about the metabolism of exercise. The complete explanation about the turnover of proteins, krebs cycle, fatty acids, different roles of celular ARN are so well explained that you don't need to be an expert to understand the basics of this biochemical principles.



2. Shipment for this book was fast. didnt worry at all about having my books in time. would use this company again.

5 comments about Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins.

1. I guess that everybody interrested by this kind of book knows already a little about bioinformatic and wants to improve his bioinformatician skill. So forget about this book:
   This is really a well-documented introduction to all the methods currently used by every biologist or biology student, such as Blast, Clustal, multiple alignement or use of web-interface for submiting sequence.
   So get it if you need a clear introduction to the field, but if you already know a little bit about bioinfo, immediately choose a more detailed book.



2. Like any survey, it seems to touch the major features only. And, as others have pointed out, the tools change but the book doesn't.
   
   I think this is a good, brief introduction to the wide variety of bioinformatic tools and databases on the internet. It describes the major features of each, and the kinds of results that each tool is good for. After that, the serious user will go to the sources of each tool or database, to learn more about the specifics as of the moment. No book can hope to keep up with the weekly enhancements at the major repositories.
   
   I emphasize that this is for tools users, not tool makers. It addresses the working scientists who already know their subjects and their needs. This skips over the algorithms in favor of higher level descriptions, and skips over many of the biological reasons for the tools described. Better-informed tool users get better answers from the tools, true. At some point, though, the biologists want to skip the theory, skip the introduction to subjects in which they're experts, and get on with their science. I don't think this book was ever meant for people - and I'm one - who want full details of the algorithms.
   
   I agree, the book treats its many subjects in a shallow way. I think that is by intent, since the book's real goal is breadth and its target is a reader who knows the basic science. It's a bit off the center of my interests, but I've found it helpful.



3. The book is a collection of chapters by different authors addressing software tools for various problems: database search, multiple sequence alignment, gene prediction, protein structure prediction, etc. A big flaw is that all of the authors assume a different level of prior background and have rather different emphases.

   I'd have to agree with the other reviewer that Chapters 1 & 17, which constitute 10% of the book, are wasted paper. No one in 2001 (when the book was published), let alone 2004, needs Chapter 1's lengthy explanation of what e-mail and web browsers are. And the perl program at the anticlimax of Chapter 17 was ... anticlimactic.

   The book is to a great extent a catalog of available software tools. With the exception of the chapters on multiple alignment and phylogeny, the emphasis is on not on how the tools work but how to operate them -- to the of saying "at this URL there is a web page where you can either paste in your sequence or upload a file". The idea of invoking a program through a Unix command line is more than once presented as a truly daunting prospect. The authors generally do a good job of emphasizing that the programs are the beginning of analysis and not the end; the results must always be viewed somewhat skeptically with an expert eye.

   If you're coming at the book as a biologist, you will probably find it to be a useful catalog of software, though undoubtedly dated by now. If you're coming at it from the informatics side, you're going to need some background... a book like Dwyer's, Setubal and Meidanis's, or Mount's will get you up to speed on the algorithm aspects of the field with simplified versions of many of the big problems. Then you can look at this book to find good pointers to the ways the real-world versions have been addressed.

   The book was published three years ago and, being to a large extent an index of the work of others, is necessarily no longer up to date in a fast-moving field. It needs a revision and, in the meantime, it would make more sense to snag a used copy than to pay full price for a new book.




4. Book came quickly but edges were bent, not like a new book. Returned it and got full refund.



5. I agree with the reviewer who said that this book is poorly organized. Actually, I would summarise this book with a single saying: TMI (Too Much Information)! In teaching you how to accomplish a simple task, the details given are tremendous, so much so that you can't see the forest from the trees and you end up having to navigate the bioinformatics Web sites by trial and error anyway. Perhaps this book would be useful for a post-doc or someone already very familiar with those sites and want to know how they work. For the student (undergrad through Master), I suggest picking up the short-n-sweet paperback 'Bioinformatics' by Westhead, Parish & Twyman instead.

5 comments about Biochemistry (3rd Edition) (Biochemistry (Mathews/ Addison-Wesley)).

1. It's difficult to review a book on a subject as biochemistry, when you're a student, and this is the only book I've read on the subject. This book is used by medical students at the Universty of Bergen, Norway, and as a student I find it very easy to read (if you have mind that biochemistry is not an easy subject). The illustrations and figures in the book are helpful, and often, you can get the essential in the text by only looking at the figures.



2. I have not seen the 2000 edition yet, but the previous edition is very elegantly written. Compare with some other biochemistry text, this book provides another view into biochemistry. Almost (if not all) all the chapters have a special topic after the chapter text, showing you how we can turn the dry text into useful experimental tools for solving life's problem, scientifically. These special topics also give us a view into the physical chemistry world, which has become more and more important at the time.



3. I am a biochemistry major at the university of the philippines. i have several biochem books on my shelf and i just recently purchased a copy of the 2000 edition (i also have the 2nd ed). the book just keeps getting better. the book really helps a lot especially when the class lecture corresponds with how the book presents the subject matter. as a biochem major, i'd say this is a pretty good way to present biochem. it makes it seem easy and fun to read. you look at the pictures and read the caption and you learn the idea in a flash.



4. Mathew's Biochemistry is an excellent book to start this difficult subject! The easy diagrams and interesting notes just keeps you wanting to learn more...Read, read and read. If only it could have a more clinical focus it would be 100% perfect. Combine it with "Harper's Biochemistry" and you will soon run A+ on scores! To die for!



5. Don't misjudge my review; I'm not just some lazy kid who hates all work. I'm in the honors program at UCI studying to be a doctor. And this book isn't very good. The reading, I will grant, isn't too bad. Most of the time it's easy to follow, and sometimes it's confusing. However, the problem comes when you try to put it all to the test and do the problems at the end of the chapter. Not only does the book present problems that were not covered in the reading, but it doesn't explain the answers, either. It just gives them to you. I am forced to constantly ask a friend of mine if he knows how to get the answer they give, because the book gives no indication of how to arrive at it. It also withholds information; in one problem in chapter 5 the answer they give is only possible, ONLY possible, if chymotrypsin cleaves a protein at isoleucine (the book only gives leucine, not iso-). In the next problem, it is virtually the same thing, taking cleavage information and trying to put amino acids in the correct order. However, in this one, their answer insists that you NOT cleave at isoleucine. Otherwise you'd be wrong and wonder what you did. Of course, you'd get no explanation. If you have to get this book for a class, then fine. Good luck with the homework if you have to turn in the problems. But if you're getting it to further challenge yourself of your own accord, search around for some type of solutions manual first, because this book won't tell you how to get anything. It assumes you have a lot of background knowledge already, so I don't know where one reviewer got the notion that this is great for beginners...if you want a good book for beginners, seek out the Garrett & Grisham book. It simplifies biochemistry beyond belief compared to this book.

1 comments about Student Solutions Manual/Study Guide/Problems Book for Garrett/Grisham's Biochemistry, 3rd.

1. I ended up not really needing this book for biochemistry class and my instructor helps write the national exam so i'm in a good class! Know your organic chemistry-get a good study guide and have a good gen chem book to refer to-sometimes biochem aims a bit over your head!
   a.l.

2 comments about High-Yield Cell and Molecular Biology.

1. High yield cell and molecular biology is exactly what it says, and from the outset doesn't pretend to be anything else. "Lean efficient text" says the blurb, "Study guides with the barest essentials". These words certainly comforted me after reading the somewhat ominous title! The text is compact, with clear and helpful diagrams illustrating and clarifying the most difficult concepts in the book. The style is in fact very much the same as I might choose to write own revision notes, with chapters divided into sub-titles, and those into bullet points. Key words are emboldened, so it is possible to absorb a page by only scanning the bold type; useful if you are caught short when preparing for an exam and need the facts quickly! There is a smattering of clinical examples throughout, and descriptions of procedures such as PCR, which both help anchor your thoughts of the sometimes abstract nature of the subject. Being a molecular biology book it is biased toward genetics, and as this is a confusing area for many students (including me), this will help if your genetics lectures tend to sail several meters over your head. On the downside, the economic nature of the text and the no-frills nature of the diagrams mean that it is not a particularly colourful or engaging read in it's own right. This is also positive, meaning that it is easier to extract information quickly than would be possible from a more bulky text. It is clearly meant to be dipped into, rather than read cover-to-cover. Realistically though, who would read a textbook cover-to-cover? People who will benefit from this book will be pre-clinical medical students, those intercalating a BSc in clinical science or genetics, doctors requiring an up-to-date review, or other students of biomedical science. This should not be your only textbook on cellular biology and genetics, but will serve as the perfect revision tool when exams sidle up too close for comfort.



2. To get the quick and fast H.Y. facts for the boards this is the one! Its shorter and to the point in comparison to BRS. Note this is not a good book for class only for the Boards

No comments about Fundamentals of Biochemistry, Student Companion: Life at the Molecular Level.

3 comments about An Introduction to Medicinal Chemistry.

1. The author states that this book is aimed at undergraduates who have a basic grounding in chemistry and are interested in a future career in the pharmaceutical industry. Chemistry background includes now elements of quantum chemistry and molecular orbital theory. The author completely fails in including these elements in the Chapter on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships. Moreover, he seems completely unaware of the fundamental contributions of Quantum Chemistry to QSAR. This text could perfectly include elements of (INTRODUCTORY) quantum-chemical applications to QSAR (the scientific literature is full). We must wait until the next edition to get a book that can be recommended to serious students!. Juan S. Gomez-Jeria Associate Professor Faculty of Sciences University of Chile.



2. This book is good in the sense that it is an easy read for anyone interested in the subject. The drawings and cartoons provide a bit of humor to the text and the writing is cloear and focused. The only drawback to the book is that the layperson does not get the full effect of the book without a very good grasp of biochemistry (hence the term layperson!). To get the real scope of the book, one would need to read a good Biochem text ( I personally suggest Lehninger, et. al. Principles of Biochemistry, 3rd ed.). A good pharmacological text would greatly enhance the reader's understanding of the subject as well (i.e. Goodman and Gilman's). Otherwise, the book does give a very brief, very good overview of many aspects of Medicinal Chemistry.



3. This text has a very good chapters on QSAR (quantitative-structure activity relationship). I recommend this for the beginning scholars and students interested in QSAR for drug design.