Essential Genes

NOTE: Benjamin Cummings will continue to publish and service adoptions for Essential Genes only through 12/31/07. On January 1, 2008, Jones and Bartlett Publishers will release a new edition of Essential Genes. For more information, please visit http://www.jbpub.com/ For courses in Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, and Gene Regulation. Two decades ago Benjamin Lewin's Genes revolutionized the teaching of molecular biology and molecular genetics by introducing a unified approach to bacteria and higher organisms. Essential GENES continues the tradition ofremaining at the cutting edge of molecular biology, covering gene structure, organization, and expression. Essential GENES begins with the sequence of the human and other genomes and starts with complete coverage of recent advances in genomics. The coverage of genomics is then integrated throughout the text. In striving for currency, Essential GENES includes the latest coverage of genome organization, DNA replication, gene regulation and many other new topics.

The Second Edition of Lewin's Essential GENES continues to provide students with the latest findings in the field of molecular biology and molecular genetics. An exceptional new pedagogy enhances student learning and helps readers understand and retain key material like never before. New Concept and Reasoning Checks at the end of each chapter section, End of Chapter Questions and Further Readings for each chapter, and several categories of special topics boxes within each chapter expand and reinforce important concepts. The reorganization of topics in this edition allows students to focus more sharply on the key material at hand and improves the natural flow of course material. New end-of-chapter questions reviews major points in the chapter and allow students to test themselves on important course material. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.

This book provides state-of-the-art information on gene essentiality screenings in a wide variety of organisms, i.e. screening for protein-coding genes and other genomic elements that are required by an organism to survive under specific conditions. With a focus on the two techniques that have revolutionized the field, the collection begins with chapters employing CRISPR/Cas9-based approaches followed by Tn-seq-based approaches, but later chapters also delve into other techniques for exploring essential genes, such as bioinformatics methods. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Comprehensive and authoritative, Essential Genes and Genomes: Methods and Protocols is an ideal guide for researchers attempting to strip genetics down to its fundamentals.

There is growing enthusiasm in the scientific community about the prospect of mapping and sequencing the human genome, a monumental project that will have far-reaching consequences for medicine, biology, technology, and other fields. But how will such an effort be organized and funded? How will we develop the new technologies that are needed? What new legal, social, and ethical questions will be raised? Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome is a blueprint for this proposed project. The authors offer a highly readable explanation of the technical aspects of genetic mapping and sequencing, and they recommend specific interim and long-range research goals, organizational strategies, and funding levels. They also outline some of the legal and social questions that might arise and urge their early consideration by policymakers.

This volume opens by covering two main types of approaches widely used to determine essential genes: single-gene knockouts and transposon mutagenesis, in both prokaryotes and Candida albicans. Given the significant advancement in the computational predictions of microbial essential genes, the second half of the book examines four main types of approaches: comparative genomics, supervised machine learning, constraint-based methods, and corrections of transposon mutagenesis data, as well as databases and servers that are often used in studying gene essentiality. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include an introduction to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and up-to-date, Gene Essentiality: Methods and Protocols will aid researchers who wish to further our knowledge in this vital field of study.

A historical and critical analysis of the concept of the gene that attempts to provide new perspectives and metaphors for the transformation of biology and its philosophy.

Completely updated to reflect new discoveries and current thinking in the field, the Fourth Edition of Essential Genetics is designed for the shorter, less comprehensive introductory course in genetics. The text is written in a clear, lively, and concise manner and includes many special features that make the book user friendly. Topics were carefully chosen to provide a solid foundation for understanding the basic processes of gene transmission, mutation, expression, and regulation. The text also helps students develop skills in problem solving, achieve a sense of the social and historical context in which genetics has developed, and become aware of the genetic resources and information available through the Internet.

Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics. Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature. In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come. “I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, Nature “Not by Genes Alone is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University

NOTE: Benjamin Cummings will continue to publish and service adoptions for Essential Genes only through 12/31/07. On January 1, 2008, Jones and Bartlett Publishers will release a new edition of Essential Genes. For more information, please visit http://www.jbpub.com/For courses in Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, and Gene Regulation.Two decades ago Benjamin Lewin's Genes revolutionized the teaching of molecular biology and molecular genetics by introducing a unified approach to bacteria and higher organisms. Essential GENES continues the tradition ofremaining at the cutting edge of molecular biology, covering gene structure, organization, and expression.Essential GENES begins with the sequence of the human and other genomes and starts with complete coverage of recent advances in genomics. The coverage of genomics is then integrated throughout the text.In striving for currency, Essential GENES includes the latest coverage of genome organization, DNA replication, gene regulation and many other new topics.