dd@beta.UUCP (Dan Davison) (09/25/87)
.Does anyone out there know of a good textbook summarizing laboratory .techniques used in molecular biology? Try "Molecular Cloning" by Tom Maniatis et al, Cold Spring Harbor Press, about 1984. There are some hysterical errors in it, but it's an excellent overview and in general the most commonly cited for these techniques. IRL Press (Oxford and Washington DC) has a "Practical Techniques in blah" series (gel electrophoresis, sequencing, and cloning are the three that I can immediately recall). I haven't used the latter so I can't comment on the quality. Anyone else out there (Craig? Dizzy Dan? Sean?) remember the name of the new competitor to "Molecular cloning"? It has come out recently and I've heard good things about it, but a quick scan of the latest PNAS does not reveal any references to it. .Does anyone know if someone is doing research involving the prediction of .the shape of a protein from its amino acid sequence (or nucleotide sequence)? If you mean tertiary structure by "shape", yes some; if you mean secondary structure (alpha helices, beta sheets, beta turns) lots and lots. For the former, see the paper by Richard A. Lathrop, Teresa Webster, and Temple Smith (or some permutation of those authors) in PNAS, or MIT AI Labs Memo 902, "Ariadne: pattern directed inference and hierarchial abstraction in protein structure recognition" (May 1987). The Webster, Lathrop, and Smith paper may be in Biochemistry, but may not be out yet. The AI memo dated May says "To appear". The AI memo is copyrighted ACM so it may be published somewhere, but I don't follow non-biological literature. There are also lots of people doing molecular mechanics attempts at tertiary structure, but the number of variables is so large that according to one estimate you'd need thousands of Cray-2s running in parallel and many, many, many total universe lifetimes to calculate just one small protein (100 amino acids). dan davison/theoretical biology/t-10 ms k-710/los alamos national laboratory los alamos, nm 87545/ dd@lanl.gov (arpa)/...cmcl2!lanl!dd (uucp)
diaz@aecom.YU.EDU (Dizzy Dan Diaz) (09/30/87)
In article <10537@beta.UUCP>, dd@beta.UUCP (Dan Davison) writes: > > Try "Molecular Cloning" by Tom Maniatis et al, Cold Spring Harbor Press, > about 1984. There are some hysterical errors in it, but it's an excellent > overview and in general the most commonly cited for these techniques. > > Anyone else out there (Craig? Dizzy Dan? Sean?) remember the > name of the new competitor to "Molecular cloning"? It has come out recently > and I've heard good things about it, but a quick scan of the latest PNAS > does not reveal any references to it. A succesor to the throne of Maniatis, et.al., is long overdue. The book is sincerely out of date and far from complete. It has, however, succeeded in making molecular biology available to just about anyone (including M.D.'s). While at the ASBC meeting in Philly, I spoke to people from Cold Spring Harbor Press. A Maniatis revision is due soon. I don't know which new competitor Dr. Dan was referring to in his posting, but I also did examine a molecular biology bible to be put out soon by Academic Press as part of their paramonumental "Methods in Enzymology" series. The volume (# 15_?) is in press and will be available either as a hardback or in looseleaf format. When I pointedly asked the AP representative whether their volume was "as good as Maniatis" she definitely replied in the affirmative. I have instructed to our library to pipe the volume to me as soon as it arrives, at which time I will publish a review if anyone is interested. -- ....* dn/dx = Dan Diaz (diaz@aecom.yu.edu) 212 430 9476 ~..|.> Department of Wasting Taxpayers' Money on Useless Research *\../ Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Bar & Grill