Essential cell biology (2nd ed.)

Abstract

Essential Cell Biology (2nd Ed.) Alberts, B., Bray, D., Hopkin, K., Johnson, A., Lewis, L., Raff, M., Roberts, K., and Walter, P., Garland Science, New York, 2004, 841 pp., ISBN 0-8153-3480-X, $98.00. At first glance, Essential Cell Biology (ECB) appears to be a short version of Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC) put together by five of the authors of MBoC. However, ECB is much more and significantly improved over its first edition, which was indeed reminiscent of a Reader's Digest condensation of the third edition of MBoC. The authors of ECB bring some of the best of MBoC into this text and add important features that make this an excellent text for teaching cell biology across a broad range of student backgrounds ranging from the sophomore to the senior level. There are four major medium-sized cell biology textbooks: Cell and Molecular Biology by Karp; The World of the Cell by Becker, Kleinsmith, and Hardin; The Cell by Cooper; and Cell Biology by Pollard and Earnshaw. The latter two are highly descriptive texts. Pollard and Earnshaw's text is refreshingly unique in its presentation and is the more sophisticated of the two. The texts by Karp and Becker et al., in contrast, provide numerous diversions into experiments to educate students in how knowledge in cell biology is obtained. ECB joins this collection of texts, displaying some of the best features of each and providing useful ancillary materials. Of the five texts, ECB is more richly illustrated, but the writing is not as smooth as the others (e.g. Becker et al. or Pollard and Earnshaw). The general layout of the second edition of ECB is similar to MBoC and incorporates several features from MBoC: 1) integration of genomics throughout the text; 2) “Panels” in which key concepts are elaborated (several identical to those found in MBoC); and 3) many of the same figures. ECB is different, however, in important ways pedagogically that make it worth serious consideration by cell biology instructors. First, the margins of the text often contain questions to provoke students to apply their knowledge or think more deeply about what they have been reading. Second, each chapter contains a section called “How We Know,” which discusses how key knowledge has been obtained through experiment. These sections are a nice mix of diagrams and photographic data, and the choices are classic experiments of which every cell biology instructor is familiar. Third, the end of each chapter contains a set of questions and problems for which the answers are available at the back of the textbook in an appendix. To my own mind, supplying the answers to all of these questions is a bad idea. It fosters dependence and does not force the student to find the answer more diligently, which can include discussing the questions with peers and instructors, both important learning mechanisms. The authors use assertive statement titles to break up each chapter into small 650- to 750-word sections. Indeed, the “Detailed Contents,” which contains all the titles of each of these sections, almost serves as a chapter preview. The extensive use of such titles is an improved hierarchical structure over the stodgy numerical outline form one sees in other texts. Each chapter is divided into a small number of sections (e.g. “Ion Channels and the Membrane Potential”), which is further divided into several assertive statement-titled sections (e.g. “Ion Channels Randomly Snap Between Open and Closed States”). More importantly, these titles focus the student on the key idea that is developed in that section. At the end of each chapter, these ideas are briefly reworded in a collection of “Essential Concepts.” Given that a textbook like this is filled with factual information, I would prefer chapters to end with a brief discussion of the many unsolved mysteries of the cell to let students know that cell biology is a science requiring new minds to engage in the process of discovery. Twenty-one chapters divide the text into canonical topics in which 1) four chapters are devoted to introductory chemistry and biochemistry; 2) five chapters cover the “Central Dogma”; 3) five chapters cover membranes, secretion, organelles, and energy capture; 4) three chapters cover the cell cycle and cell division; and then 5) there are three chapters on the cytoskeleton, cell communication, and “Tissues and Cancer.” Chapter 21, “Tissues and Cancer,” is a merger and condensation of two chapters of MBoC (Ch. 22, “Histology: The Lives and Deaths of Cells in Tissue” and Ch. 23, “Cancer”). The good news here is that the ECB incorporates the basic theme of the histology chapter of MBoC, which is a fine integration of classical histology and modern cell and molecular biology. The bad news is that it seems to shortchange this theme with too few illustrations. Still, this is a great chapter, and it might be the one chapter that makes this book unique among its competitors. The introductory chapters of this book, like those in MBoC, contain some of the best introductions to fundamental chemistry and biochemistry in any life science text that I have ever seen. An interesting new chapter is Chapter 9, “How Genes and Genomes Evolve.” The chapter is brief and seems a bit out of place, geared more to readers of a molecular genetics text. I think that exploring the evolution of genes or proteins relevant to cell biology would have made this chapter more meaningful to students of cell biology (e.g. clotting factors, cell adhesion molecules, growth factor receptors). Chapter 10, “Manipulating Genes and Cells,” is a disappointment; it is too superficial and omits at least one key technology. The presentations of DNA cloning and PCR are not sufficiently rigorous (although the animation of PCR in the CD-ROM is quite good). While it is nice to see in situ hybridization, DNA sequencing, expression vectors, microarray technology, and knockout mice presented, it is unfortunate that the two-hybrid system is not discussed. Given the attention macromolecular assemblages now receive, the two-hybrid system is one of the key gateways in determining the composition of these systems as well as other protein-protein interactions that drive cellular processes. Given the emphasis on genomics in this text, it is surprising that proteomics is not discussed in this chapter. Other features that come with ECB are an Instructor's DVD (with additional videos and animations that are not available on the student CD-ROM, transparencies (but unfortunately no CD with all the figures), a test bank available online, and an interesting curriculum supplement by Prof. Katayoun Chamany (online at Garland's web site)) that incorporates some of the cooperative learning concepts that have become the rage in the last few years. Another feature available to anyone, whether you use this book or not, is the availability of many of these figures online at NCBI, if you know the cognate version of the figure in the third edition of MBoC. Anyone not familiar with this marvelous resource owes herself or himself a visit to the Books section at NCBI (www.ncbi.nih.gov). The CD-ROM accompanying this book is a collection of most of the outstanding animations and films found in the CD-ROM of MBoC. Many of these are available on CD-ROMs in other texts, but a few of these animations are still unique to Garland Science textbooks. Cell biology instructors face a choice between two kinds of texts: encyclopedic texts such as MBoC or Lodish et al.'s Molecular Cell Biology or medium-sized texts such as ECB and the others I have mentioned. While I prefer a medium-sized text, I know many instructors who prefer the encyclopedic texts. Among the medium-sized texts, one also has some choices. The Cell and Cell Biology read like narratives with very few diversions into experiments or applications in biomedicine or biotechnology. As such, they are very easy reading and beautifully illustrated. Indeed, Cell Biology also has the unique perspective of two outstanding cell biologists whose research spans well over two decades. On the other hand, if you like having self-assessment available in the text for your students, ECB, The World of the Cell, and Cell and Molecular Biology make this available. ECB has the most when one considers the questions embedded in the chapters in addition to those at the end. Of the latter three texts, I liked the writing in The World of the Cell best. All of these books are available in relatively recent editions, with ECB being the newest. There are some confusions in the text, mostly minor but potentially troublesome for an instructor. I'll just mention a few. On page 123, hydrophobic interactions are discussed and the reader is led to think of it as a fourth weak molecular force, which is a troubling oversimplification. In Fig. 12-2, water is listed as a molecule that easily penetrates synthetic lipid bilayers, which is also an oversimplification that diminishes the importance and ubiquity of the water channel aquaporin. The most difficult chapter to read in the text is Chapter 16, “Cell Communication.” This chapter reads like a last-minute condensation of MBoC's cognate chapter; consequently, it is conceptually incoherent at times. I also think that signal integration and antagonism between pathways is given too little attention given recent discoveries of the last several years, especially with the BMP and FGF signaling pathways. Surprisingly, insulin receptor signaling gets no attention at all. While signaling is complicated, it is not conceptually so such that I think it does no service to students or naïve instructors to deal with receptor tyrosine kinases as abstractly as these authors do. Alas, it is easy to find faults with a textbook; however, despite its faults, ECB might be the best teaching text on the market right now. It combines solid writing, excellent figures, extensive self-assessment, and a nice collection of animations and videos on its CD-ROM. If you were disappointed with the first edition as I was, take a close look at this substantively different, excellent second edition.