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Biochemistry
by: Donald Voet |
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Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 572 EAN: 9780471193500 Edition: 3 ISBN: 047119350X Label: Wiley Manufacturer: Wiley Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 1616 Publication Date: March 09, 2004 Publisher: Wiley Studio: Wiley
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| Customer Reviews | ||
  - Regarding Science-Ejected Vitalism, 1995:Vitalism is a profoundly science-ejected concept, though many CAM or 'natural health' cabals falsely claim that vitalism survives scientific scrutiny. I quote: "Pasteur assumed that living systems were endowed with a 'vital force' that permitted them to evade the laws of nature governing inanimate matter [p.333...but] Buchner demonstrated that cell-free yeast extracts [can carry out fermentation...] this discovery refuted the then widely held belief that fermentation, and every other biological process, was mediated by some 'vital force' inherent in living matter [p.444...] thermodynamics of life. One of the last refuges of vitalism, the doctrine that biological processes are not bound by the physical laws that govern inanimate objects, was the belief that living things can somehow evade the laws of thermodynamics [...] a view partially refuted by elaborate calorimetric measurements on living animals that are entirely consistent with the energy conservation predictions of the first law of thermodynamics [p.437]." -r.c. Rating: - BIOCHEMISTRY MAJOR/GRADUATE? LOOK NO FURTHERActually, it's kinda dumb to recommend this book for graduate biochemistry students. If you haven't heard about Voet while being an undergrad, it's because you weren't interested in biochemistry at all. To everyother undergrad who is really into biochemistry and is intending to follow on through research in biochemical science, I say look no further. Voet & Voet IS the very best biochemistry book you will find right now in the shelves. Of course, don't expect to read through it unless you're taking a 2nd course in biochemistry or doubling a major in chemistry/biochemistry. If this is your first approach to biochemistry (and you don't care much about the chemistry/physics behind it all), this isn't the book you're looking for. Check Lehninger instead (the best INTRODUCTORY biochemistry book for DUMMIES - aka. Medschool, Biology, etc.). But, sooner or later, if you're the curious type, you'll start wondering, asking questions like "How did they actually find out the genetic code?" or "What's the enzymatic reaction mechanism for this complex enzyme?" or "How do they manage physical data to make all these pretty 3D crystallographic structures?". Of course, you could go to more specialized books to find all about these and other inquiries. But, the fact is Voet & Voet collects all the relevant scientific answers in one big chunk of paper. I've known uncountable biochemistry grads who've strived between Matthews and Devlin, Lehinger and Stryer, and Garret and Grisham, just to compile the information that's presented in a perfect order in this amazing book. Don't waste your time. If you're taking it seriously, it's Voet & Voet. Rating:  - A Benchmark in 2 semester biochem courses; however, needs revisionI have finished a 2 semester course in biochemistry which had focused on both biopolymer chemistry and metabolism, as well as fundamentals of biotechnology (i.e. cloning and expression studies). From the early days we were prescribed Voet, and it was a textbook that most often made students cringe and complain. The fundamental reasons for it doing so was attributed to its pedantic style, uneasy writing, disoriented explanations and verbose nature. It requires that you actually start reading it prior to the semester, since the length and depth of chapters is too much to handle; this is not due to the information itself. Biochemistry is relatively easy, but the book does not give clear explanations and often randomly jumps into unwelcome depths prior to establishing an overall context of the subject matter. The chapter on DNA metabolism is a very good example, it starts off giving a history lesson about how radiography and other exploratory studies (nowadays these techniques arent implemented) were conducted and proceeds into the domains, motifs and archetypes of DNA polymerase without first establishing the biological purpose of replication, how it differs in the eukaryotes and prokaryotes, the fundamental "machinery" involved in replication and how the processes occurs (as an overview). So now from this stupid history lesson we jump into the structure and function of various different protein units....no mention of sequence or relevance. Its hard as it is doing four units of different subjects, I was lucky enough to primarily be doing all chemistry units for the first semester. I still suffered. I mean the length and depth of this book is not suited to a struggling undergraduate student, who has to cover a variety of other subjects. When it came to the exams, revision was almost impossible with this book. I had to rely on my own hand written notes. I am principally an organic chemist and I have to say that the authors really got me lost even in the sections pertaining to a structural and mechanistic explanation of metabolic elements. I think it was due to lack of experience of the authors in these fields, in conjunction with a desire to present a sophisticated discussion of glycolysis and gluconeogensis. They dont even explain WHY plants and animals store glucose as starch and glycogen respectively. Nothing about osmolarity and concentration gradients. These two (hubby and wife) claim to give a robust understanding of the fundamental workings of biochemistry. However all they provide is unnecessary, superfluous information which if I did actually even seek, I would look at journal articles rather than an undergraduate textbook. Meaning that no university on earth expects 1st and 2nd year biochemistry majors to even know a lot of that junk, so why bother presenting it? We dont care about which genes encode each polymeraze. At most we may care about how they differ in their active sites, possibly in their subunit structure and how they actually process DNA. Garrett and Grisham are significantly better than this book for undergrads. Rating: - great book, grossly overpricedVoet and Voet is an excellent introductory biochemistry textbook. The focus leans more towards the chemical aspects as opposed to the biological, which allows it to fill an important gap among undergraduate texts. The scope is broad and comprehensive, with clear writing and informative illustrations. While the book is a valuable resource, the price is truly outrageous. For those adopting textbooks for classes, I recommend assessing whether the added chemical rigor is worth the added price for students. Serious and motivated students of biochemistry will likely appreciate and benefit most from this book. Check out the contents (e.g. at a library or college bookstore), and make sure they meet your needs, before taking the considerable financial plunge in buying this book though. Rating: - Pluses and publisher minusAs a reference for those of us that are out here doing research in the real world this is a Godsend. It may not be appropriate for an introductory text but for those of us needing a concise backup for real decisions it is wonderful. HOWEVER the BS that the CD won't run on my Mac Tiger (which gives me: "The page "Guided Exploration 23 (Section 29-1)" has content of MIME type "application/x-spt". Because you don't have a plug-in installed for this MIME type, this content can't be displayed." I have installed everything with the disk.) is publisher junk. I can't even send Wiley and Sons an email because the link won't go through. Kudos to the authors, shame on the publishers. |
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