Molecular Biology of the Cell

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This fact provides compelling evidence that all living things on Earth have inherited the form of their genetic instructions, as well as how to use them, from a universal common ancestral cell. They can serve either as an introduction for those who have not studied biochemistry or as a refresher course for those who have. Like DNA and RNA, proteins carry information in the form of a linear sequence of subunits in the same way as a human message written in an alphabetic script. We discuss this remarkable molecule in detail in Chapters 4 and 5; here we provide only an overview of its structure and means of reproduction.

Vallee (Columbia University), Tom Vanaman (University of Kentucky), Harry van der Westen (Wageningen, The Netherlands), Harold Varmus (National Cancer Institute), Alexander J. Each amino acid is built around a core structure that allows it to be covalently linked in a standard way to any other amino acid in the set; attached to this core is a side group of atoms that gives each amino acid a distinctive chemical character. The site also features tips for assigning Norton’s digital learning tools and addressing the most common course challenges.Such protein names take many forms, although most of them traditionally begin with a lowercase letter (actin, hemoglobin, catalase); others are acronyms (such as GFP, for green fluorescent protein, or BMP4, for bone morphogenetic protein 4). Swapna Bhat (University of North Georgia, Gainesville), Pete Cullen (University of Bristol, United Kingdom), Zheng Fan (The University of Tennessee Health Science Center), Adam Frost (University of California, San Francisco), Wendy Innis-Whitehouse (University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley), Reinhard Jahn (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany), Elizabeth Miller (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom), Sean Munro (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom), Michael Silverman (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Susan Spencer (Saint Louis University), Christine Suetterlin (University of California, Irvine), Graham Warren (University College London, United Kingdom).

Because cells are the fundamental units of life, it is to cell biology—the study of the structure, function, and behavior of cells—that we must look for answers to the questions of what life is and how it works.

The Digital Problems Book in Smartwork, based on the popular print supplement and authored by John Wilson and Tim Hunt, The Digital Problems Book introduces the experimental foundations of cell biology through assessment. Glossary Terms Throughout the book, boldface type has been used to highlight key terms at the point in a chapter where the main discussion occurs.