Book Review

Gene Cloning Principles and ApplicationsJulia Lodge, Pete Lund, and Steve Minchin, Taylor &Francis, UK, 2006, 356 pp., ISBN 9780748765348,$59.95.

Gene Cloning is an excellent text aimed at second- orthird-year university students, and the authors havetaught from it during their courses in Birmingham, UK. Atthe outset, students are expected to understand theCentral Dogma and DNA structure as well as the ele-ments of protein structure and cell biology. The text is di-vided into 13 chapters and contains numerous informa-tive three-color figures, tables, and sidebars. The texttitle suggests a somewhat narrow focus on cloning and,indeed, the first few chapters focus on genome organiza-tion, cloning tools, and screening DNA libraries. In thefollowing chapters, the focus is on gene identification,sequencing, and bioinformatics. The last several chap-ters deal with the practical issues including protein pro-duction, functional analysis of proteins, and gene regula-tion. Students are certain to enjoy the final two chapterson transgenic organisms and medical and forensicapplications.

One of the central themes is that biology matters and

that understanding the organism is important. In chapter

2, DNAs from different organisms are compared, and

enough quantitative data are given so that the instructor

may devise interesting exercises. The discussion of

genome size is informative and the inclusion of bacterial,

viral, and plasmid genomes set the stage for later chap-

ters. What I enjoyed about this book is illustrated by the

subsequent chapter on cloning. As has been typical for

the last three decades, the discussion of cloning starts

with restriction enzymes and plasmids. But then, it pro-

gresses very efficiently to more recent developments

such as TA cloning, blue-white selection strategies, the

use of the polymerase chain reaction, and real-time PCR.

The text focuses on describing the purpose and princi-

ples of various experiments. It is not a laboratory manual

in that details of procedures are not discussed and

chemically inclined instructors may wish to add more

detail. The chapter on sequencing DNA starts with the

traditional topics of dideoxy sequencing and PAGE gels

and then moves onto a well-done discussion of shot gun

versus hierarchical approaches to genome sequencing.

Recent advances in sequencing, capillary electrophore-

sis, and pyrosequencing are discussed in terms of

genome projects. The chapter on bioinformatics is a very

nice discussion of how to identify a gene. Starting with

the genetic code and codon usage, the authors intro-

duce BLAST and FASTA. They provide some useful fig-

ures for having students compare sequences by hand

before using automated sequence comparison tools. I

especially enjoyed the Venn diagram of amino acids. The

authors insist that biology is the final judge of the cor-

rectness of any given homology and include two sections

to reinforce this point.Questions for students are interspersed throughout the

text and both questions and answers appear at the endof each chapter as a student-friendly feature. Most of thequestions are quite simple, and the instructor will needto supplement these with more challenging questions.Each chapter also includes a short annotated bibliogra-phy of classic papers referred to in the text. There is alsoa short glossary at the end of the text. It is refreshing inthis age of textbooks with complete websites and numer-ous ancillary materials that this text is just a text. A fewweblinks are mentioned throughout the text, and the bio-informatics chapter contains relevant accession numbersand web resources so that the student or instructor mayfollow the text. Gene Cloning would be an excellentchoice of text to accompany a laboratory-based coursewherein the students are working on a particular system.Although numerous interesting biological systems arementioned to illustrate various points in the text, the in-structor will need to provide the motivation of a particularresearch problem. Alternatively, the text could work wellas a resource for students in a course wherein studentsare introduced to the primary literature in molecular biol-ogy. The writing is clear and concise and, importantly forbeginners, the essential information is not lost amongst amyriad of details. The instructor will find an excellentcombination of traditional and up-to-date topics treatedand will be able to easily complement this with informa-tion from the literature or laboratory.

Susan WhiteChemistry Department

Bryn Mawr CollegeBryn Mawr, PA 19010

DOI 10.1002/bmb.132

This paper is available on line at http://www.bambed.org170

Q 2008 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION

Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 170, 2008