A Short Guide to the Human Genome
''It s a fun little review; appropriate for browsing during your in-between time. As the title emphasizes this guide is characterized by extreme brevity, under 200 pages. Nevertheless it attempts a survey of the major results which have come to light over the past decade in human genomics.'' --Razib Khan, GeneExpression''Scherer has compiled a wonderful text that not only answers many of the kinds of questions that I can think to ask about the human genome, but the kinds of questions that I get from my students and other instructors. The whole book in fact consists of questions and answers.Although the book truly is short in length, 173 pages including the index, it s long on the kinds of answers that you'd like to have at your fingertips. These kinds of analyses are not readily available from skimming the databases. I know from personal experience that gathering these kinds of data and compiling them so nicely in tables and readily accessible summaries takes time and effort. Clearly, Scherer has spent many hours doing the research to put this book together.As a researcher, I would want 'A Short Guide to the Human Genome' for quick reference. As an instructor, this text is going to serve as a really great source of questions to ask my students. I also think, since it mostly addresses the human genome, the questions inside suggest a wealth of potential student projects with genomes from other organisms.'' --Sandra Porter, FinchTalk''The most surprising aspect [of this book] is that the author presents many personal analyses of raw data from the National Center for Biotechnology Information's database. This is appealing as it reflects new analyses instead of published ones. In fact, Scherer makes a distinction throughout between the 'sequenced' and 'complete' genomes because the raw sequence itself is not even finished...A second appealing aspect is the author s recognition of simple questions for which published analyses are not easily found. For example, what is the single base composition in the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes? What are the largest genes? What are the largest proteins?...[T]he author has labored in providing a powerful barrage of data for potent questions.'' --The Quarterly Review of Biology