The Song of the Cell: Suggested Resources

All living things on Earth are composed of cells. A cell is the simplest unit of a self-contained living organism, and the vast majority of life on Earth consists of single-celled microbes, mostly bacteria. These consist of a simple 'prokaryotic' cell, with no nucleus. The bodies of more complex plants and animals consist of billions of 'eukaryotic' cells, of varying kinds, adapted to fill different roles -- red blood cells, muscle cells, branched neurons. Each cell is an astonishingly complex chemical factory, the activities of which we have only begun to unravel in the past fifty years or so through modern techniques of microscopy, biochemistry, and molecular biology. In this "Very Short Introduction", Terence Allen and Graham Cowling describe the nature of cells -- their basic structure, their varying forms, their division, their differentiation from initially highly flexible stem cells, their signalling, and programmed death. Cells are the basic constituent of life, and understanding cells and how they work is central to all biology and medicine.

"The Emperor of all Maladies" is a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer -- from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist's precision, a historian's perspective, and a biographer's passion. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave may have excised her malignant tumor, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee's own leukemia patient, Carla, "The Emperor of All Maladies" is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regiments in order to survive -- and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

If you don't know your prokaryotes from your protozoa, or learning about fungi puts you in a funk, look no further -- "Microbiogology DeMYSTiFieD", Second Edition is your cure for learning this topic's fundamental concepts and theories at your own pace. This practical guide eases you into this field of science, starting at the cell level. As you progress, you will master microbiology essentials such as bacteria, algae, viruses, pasteurization, and more. You will understand the difference between friendly and unfriendly microorganisms as well as the microscope's role in shaping microbiology. Detailed examples make it easy to understand the material, and end-of-chapter quizzes and a final exam help reinforce key ideas.

The story of the gene begins in earnest in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856 where Gregor Mendel, a monk working with pea plants, stumbles on the idea of a "unit of heredity." It intersects with Darwin's theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. It invades discourses concerning race and identity and provides startling answers to some of the most potent questions coursing through our political and cultural realms. Above all, the story of the gene is driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds -- from Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin to Francis Crick, James Watson, and Rosalind Franklin to the thousands of scientists working today to understand the code of codes. Siddhartha Mukherjee draws on his scientific knowledge and research to describe the magisterial history of a scientific idea. Woven through "The Gene" is the story of Mukherjee's own family and its recurring pattern of schizophrenia. The moral complexity of genetics reverberates even more urgently today as we learn to "read" and "write" the human genome -- unleashing the potential to change the fates and identities of our children and our children's children.

In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species -- births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has blown the lid off what we thought we knew. Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story -- from 100,000 years ago to the present. "A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived" will upend your thinking on Neanderthals, evolution, royalty, race, and even redheads. Plus, here is the remarkable, controversial story of how our genes made their way to the Americas -- one that's still being written, as ever more of us have our DNA sequenced.