Genre: Non-fiction
Published: 2006
Personal rating: 5/5
Yearly count: 35
2011 Non-Fiction Challenge: 5/9
Off The Shelf Challenge: 11/15
First off, let me say that I did not come into this book with a clean slate. Not only am I a biologist, and therefore have some pre-knowledge of this subject, I also know both authors. Nico van Straalen and Dick Roelofs have taught me a lot over the years and they write the way they teach: very accessible. I’m sure everyone knows the type of textbook that has a lot of information but just isn’t readable. This book is very readable, has a well-thought out order and the voice of the authors sounds through in every word – but perhaps that last only if you know them like I do.
The aim of this book is to explore and explain a fairly new field, that of ecological genomics. It’s basically using genomics – research based on genes and everything associated with genes – to answer ecological questions and further ecological understanding. The first three chapters are fairly technical, focusing more on the relevant genomic techniques and ways to use them, where the other four chapters of the book focus more on ecological questions and how genomics can help answer them. This order is very logical, for you have to understand the techniques used before you can understand how to apply them (or how they have been applied already). The downside of this is that the ‘fun’ ecological stuff doesn’t start until chapter four.
While we’re talking about technical chapters and more ecological ones, I want to say some things about the level of knowledge that is required to appreciate this book. Let me make it very clear from the start that this book is not for the layperson. A reader might be able to follow without the assumed ecological knowledge, as a lot of the necessary ecological knowledge is explained in the book. But if you don’t have a firm grounding in genetics, you will be lost very, very fast. And with a firm grounding I do not merely mean knowing that DNA is transcribed into RNA and then into proteins. You need to know the specifics of the mechanisms involved in that process, as well as the difference between the different domains of life, and a working knowledge of transposable elements is also recommended. Knowledge of cellular processes and techniques commonly used in genetics research (which is different from genomics) is something I’d also recommend. So as you can see, background knowledge is fairly essential to understanding this book.
Even with the required background knowledge, it’s easy to get lost sometimes when there are a lot of gene names bandied about in a short amount of text. But that is often off-set by the very clear pictures that elucidate the text. All in all, this is a very good book if you’re interested in this subject, but I do recommend that you read a good book about genetics first.
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