Websites of note

Nature Chemical Biology is a new monthly journal featuring research at the interface between chemistry and biology. The journal came to my attention because of a mailed advertisement. I now see few advertisements like this and concluded that the customers for the Nature Publishing Group were people who still open physical mail and respond. The first issue was advertised as free on-line, and it has an interesting range of subjects with excellent presentation. For example, “Small Molecules: The Missing Link in the Central Dogma” by Stuart L. Schreiber [1] is an article that could be the basis for an undergraduate essay titled “Has the Importance of Macromolecules, Particularly DNA, Been Overstated to the Detriment of Studying Metabolic Biochemistry?” There are also the predictable hard chemistry articles that you would hope to find. The full time editor of the journal is Terry L. Sheppard, who spent the previous six years at Northwestern University Department of Chemistry. His inaugural editorial makes interesting reading about the philosophy and marketing decisions that saw the launch of a 26th (by my count) specialist title under the Nature banner. Nature Chemical Biology features a range of content designed to interest both the specialist and general readers who can scan for news and views and research highlights. After assessing this journal, choose the home page of Nature from the header and look at the diverse range of activities that the Nature Publishing Group now undertakes. Athel Cornish-Bowden is an impressive speaker at conferences and widely known for his book Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics (third edition) published by Portland Press. The entry page indicated above gives access to a number of interesting resources from Cornish-Bowden, including “Errors in Biochemistry Textbooks.” I have heard him in a scathing mood talk about colleagues who ignore both experimental evidence and mathematical analyses as they perpetuate myths and bad science. The one I particularly recall was that much of genetic engineering to up-regulate or duplicate “useful” enzymes is completely futile, because ten times the amount of enzyme in a pathway that is turned off or limited by other factors is completely useless. This background is to commend Athel Cornish-Bowden as a good commentator on errors in textbooks. I had known for some time that many textbooks just copied other textbooks, and this shows in the pK values for amino acids that tend to fall into two different sets. Amino acid pK values are not mentioned by Cornish-Bowden [2], but he does systematically work through confusion about the prefixes D- and L-, specificity and properties of liver hexokinase (glucokinase), bad asymptotes for Michaelis-Menten kinetics, the myth of metabolic efficiency, uncharged amino acids, phosphofructokinase control in glycolysis, and the structure of glycogen. Taking glycogen as an illustration, it seems that most textbooks feature an obsolete protein-independent representation from the original paper by Meyer and Bernfeld in 1940, which ignores the core role of the protein glycogenin. The textbooks taken to task are Abeles et al. [3], Campbell [4], Garrett and Grisham [5], Horton et al. [6], Lehninger et al. [7], McKee and McKee [8], Mathews et al. [9], Stryer [10], Voet and Voet [11], and Zubay [12]. It would spoil the fun of discovery if you were told here how the various books relate to the objective facts as provided by Cornish-Bowden. You will find, however, that the site carries a disclaimer saying that comments were made in 2000 so that newer editions are not taken into account. You are encouraged to submit upgraded reviews to correct obsolescent information. “Dr. Banting's Namesake Of Sixty Years Ago Gave World System of Dieting Word ‘Banting’ Passed Into English Language As Synonym for Dieting–It Was an Alleged Cure for Extreme Corpulence. The discovery of Insulin treatment for diabetes by Dr. Banting, of Toronto, falls curiously enough in the year of the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the word ‘banting’ into the English language. So long ago as 1863, a William Banting of St. James Street, London, a funeral furnisher by trade … the sign board is still to be seen there–published a ‘Letter of Corpulence, addressed to the Public,’ in which he set forth an alleged cure of extreme corpulence. It was time he set himself to find a remedy, for he had grown so fat that he had to walk down stairs backwards and his life was in danger. He adopted a system of dieting, however which was so successful that he lived to be age 81, dying in 1878. His cure became popular, and ‘banting’ as a synonym passed into the language.” For the last five years, the United Kingdom Chemical Society has run a competition with prizes for students who have created computer utilities or web essays. I located the output from these competitions while searching for an illustrated treatment of gout. Using Google, I found a superb description of gout at www.chemsoc.org/exemplarchem/entries/2001/sinnott/gout-main.htm. The entire URL is given here, because I could not readily find direct menu connections to this page from the higher levels of the site. Persistence revealed that choosing “guidelines” from the Exemplarchem home page led to a section titled “Publication of Projects,” and within that was a link to the “permanent collection.” That at last led to the gout article under the title “allopurinol.” The content of the student projects is a mix of chemistry and biochemistry. Despite all of the permanent collection being the work of prize winners, the standard is highly variable. I recommend that you look for yourself. Going up to the top level (www.chemsoc.org) showed the Chemical Society to be a large professional organization with lots of links and primary resources for chemistry and biochemistry teaching. This is a poor website by way of transparent structure and navigation, and hopefully it will soon be overhauled. “Oxford held off Cambridge for the fourth successive year at the top of the rankings of the best universities in the United Kingdom. It is Oxford's spending power that gives it the edge in the league table compiled by The Times Good University Guide 2006. Cambridge holds a clear intellectual lead, coming top in 25 of the individual subject tables compared with Oxford's 10. Unlike Oxford, Cambridge also ranks in the top ten for overall teaching quality, a listing led by Dundee and York. Despite narrowing Oxford's lead this year, however, Cambridge loses out principally in the calculation of spending on facilities and student services.” “August 25, 2005: Are men cleverer than women? Men are more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, making them better suited for more complex tasks. And because their brains are around 10% bigger, they confer greater brain power. So say the authors of a paper due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology.” To be fair, the author of this article for the Times goes on to produce rebuttals of the assertion. As with many other sites, the browsing potential is enormous. When you visit the site, try the health section, particularly if nutrition is one of your interests. “Utah: A Gold Mine for Genetic Research” is the bold proclamation made by an article at the site. The University of Utah in Salt Lake City has gained international renown in human genetic research due to a unique compilation of genealogical data. Many of Utah's residents belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, and the establishment of lineage is central to the practice of that religion. It is claimed that more human disease genes have been discovered in Utah than in any other place in the world. Before visiting the site, I knew that the BRCA1 gene for breast cancer owed its discovery to families catalogued in Utah. The website is mounted by the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah. This website is mostly objective science to support individual and group learning about genetics. There are teacher resources and lesson plans, classroom activities, and teacher guides. Much of the material is introductory with professional development programs to assist teachers of kindergarten through grade 12 in bioscience topics through courses and workshops. There are also topics of current interest and descriptions of research at the University of Utah. The text and illustrations are excellent by way of a simple treatment of genetics and genetic diseases. “ … the classical period of molecular biology stretched from the discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953 till about 1966 when the genetic code, the dictionary relating the nucleic acid language to the protein language, was finally elucidated.” The above quote is from Francis Crick's What Mad Pursuit [14] and is given at this website as an introduction to a well laid out chronology of Crick's contributions to science. You can go directly to the biography of Crick, supplemented with original Crick documents held by the Wellcome Trust, by putting “Crick” into the search box. The home page URL given here is not to be missed, because the “from the newsroom” section has a well chosen offering of research highlights from the preceding month. At the right hand side there is a range of professionally authored teaching modules titled “genetic disorders,” “diabetes file,” “interactive center,” “technology center,” “bookshelf,” and “around the web.” The Wellcome group has mounted an exceptionally good site that is actively maintained. “The third edition of Concepts in Biochemistry makes the most applied and accessible biochemistry text on the market. Students are more successful with Boyer, because it isn't intimidating, and it makes clear the relevance of the material to their future careers. Like the first two editions, Boyer is written for students who need an introduction to the fundamental principles of biochemistry and are preparing for a career in the allied health sciences, the biological sciences, and the environmental sciences. The modern, student-friendly organization sets the book apart from the competition, because the early placement of nucleic acids enhances the traditional coverage of protein structure and function and metabolism. As an example, it is now possible to present metabolism in a more contemporary fashion, emphasizing gene regulation and integration.”

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