The Cell: A Molecular Approach

by Geoffrey M. Cooper

The Cell: A Molecular Approach is an easily understood and concise introduction to the molecular biology of cells, ideally suited in length and complexity for undergraduate-level courses. This unique book has been crafted to meet the need of today's students and their teachers by combining the readability and cohesiveness of a single-authored text with comprehensive and up-to-date science.Unlike other larger books where only a small fraction of the content can be sampled or understood, The Cell's language and writing are so efficient and manageable that all the information in the book can be covered in a single semester, providing a good foundation in this subject.

The Cell presents a good balance of topics in a clean and concise manner and combines a lucid sketch of the history of molecular genetics with a thorough description of the techniques of modern molecular biology. This new text provides both the necessary fundamentals of this subject as well as the more advanced concepts but without getting lost in too many details. A text extensively reviewed by more than 70 scientific experts, The Cell is ideally suited in length and complexity for sophomore- and junior-level courses. The book focuses on the molecular biology of cells as a unifying theme, with topics such as developmental biology, the nervous system, the immune system, and plant biology being discussed as examples of more general principles. Reviews of selected Key Experiments and topics in Molecular Medicine highlight the experimental nature of modern cell biology and convey the excitement of research in this area.

Genres: Science, Biology, Textbooks, Nonfiction, Medicine, Education, Biography

673 pages, CD-ROM

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Geoffrey M. Cooper is an award-winning author of medical thrillers and a 2023 Maine Literary Award Finalist in Crime Fiction. His experience as a former cancer researcher and scientific administrator, having held positions at Harvard Medical School and Boston University as professor, department chair, and associate dean, now provides extensive background for his novels. He lives in Ogunquit, Maine.

Reviews

[sophia]

i’m adding this to my goodreads BC I READ THIS FROM START TO FINISH

all 20 chapters. the glossary. the index. even the table of contents (probably over 20 times)

textbook was not too great, it’s full of text blocks and over complicated at times. like why would you explain the full experiment behind a discovery in the middle of the sentence, without first explaining what that discovery is. i don’t need to know that AKT was discovered in mice, just tell me the pathway first!!!

barely any mention of plant biology (0/10).


overall, very enjoyable. maybe one of the few books that are over 700 pages that i’ve been so engaged with. the book tapped into my unlocked potential. also probably permanently changed my brain chemistry (for good or for bad, i’ll never know)

molcell2 was one of the best courses! now i will read real books and pray for my grade 🙏🏻

[Rob]

lots of good illustrations, both schematic drawings with lumpy blobs for all the proteins and also really cool micrographs. i also liked the "key experiment" pages.

but the organization was bass ackwards. they started with chemistry, then DNA, then larger structures, until finally the cell cycle. so YOU NEVER KNEW THE BIGGER PICTURE. again and again, they would sort of hint at the larger context and then say "this is discussed in chapter 11" or whatever. the authors made the fatal mistake of so many teachers - they know the subject inside out, so they teach it from the inside out. it makes sense to them that way because they already know all the stuff from later chapters. but the student doesn't.

plus, they wrote with no personality at all. not one joke, anecdote, exclamation, etc., in the entire book.

finally, it was pretty clear that sometimes they wrote two pages and the publisher said "turn this into half a page" and so it became an ultradense series of technical sentences without explanation.

ah, well, i learned a ton, though. most interesting factoid: you can cut out two thirds of a rat's liver and it will grow back as good as new in a few days. wow.

[Melina Celeste]

Parte de mí, odio leerte.

[Endi Tafani]

Horrible ,

it’s full of info , looks great and all but after a paragraph or two you can’t continue reading , your brain begs you to stop and it shuts down automatically.

You can’t even use it to sleep , sleeping after reading this brings horrific nightmares.

[Deisy]

like it or not, this is an important book for PostGrad student like me... *sigh*
Oh well, let's just take it as a light reading... *lol*

[Sofia Lavou]

The best book for cell biology.
Very illuminating and explanatory :)
It helped me a lot.

[Meghana Rastogi]

Great book for cell and molecular biology

[ROHIT TIWARI]

good book

[ella🪽]

Thanks for RUINING MY LIFE already. Too detailed

[Niv]

best book for cell biology

[Liv]

1 estrella porque realmente me lo tuve que leer completito, gracias Dr. Paco ojalá nunca vuelva a dar esta materia!!!

(honestamente no está tan mal, tiene buenas explicaciones y además dibujos muy ilustrativos que hacen muy fácil entender explicaciones moleculares, mis capítulos fav. fueron el del núcleo y el de cáncer sin duda)

PD: creo q entender señalización celular es imposible, incluso con este libro 😭

Realmente fue un 4.25⭐️, aunque me hizo tener pesadillas por los exámenes semanales así que se quedará como un 1.

[Eddie]

Mostly easy to understand and nicely written with informative pictures. But I kept wondering if the author just stopped repeating the same thing in different words how much shorter the chapters would be...

[Pablo]

I can´t compare it to other book because i studied all from this one, but it was a really nice read

[Nida]

I don't understand the hype about this book. Tge illustrations are beyond good but the text is inferior

[Prisha]

i finished but at what cost

[aby l.s]

Lean este antes que el Karp, es más terminología friendly 🙂‍↕️

[Petra Garic]

Oduzelo mi je 6 tjedana mog zivota, ali sam dobila 5🔥

[robin]

No me lo he leído entero pero espero aprobar biología después de haber estado trabajándome los capítulos que caían 🙏

[Anastasija Tvoronoviča]

Helped me overview my studies while preparing for the admission exam , data analysis problems and questions at the end of each chapter are really helpful

[Aanchal]

an excellent book

[Deegii]

This is really helpful to increase my acknowledgement of basic science.