Reddit mentions: The best biotechnology books

I agree with everything said in this thread, but to add some things:

I strongly recommend a good particle physics course. If you can think about the basic things in our field automatically in terms of Feynman diagrams and you know the rules of certain force interactions (everything but gravity being important, with EM and Weak force interactions slightly more important than strong in our field), I've found that helps me to understand the empirical/applied stuff a lot better.

I would seek to shadow as many medical physicists from as many different specialties as possible. It'll let you decide if you really want to be/what specifically you want to do in our field, as well as look good on any resume. I'd shoot for at least one shadowing session of clinical physicists in radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, and diagnostic imaging each, as well as a health physicist, and an undergrad internship at a company like Varian or Elekta (look to the AAPM for undergrad opportunities/funding). Some physicists appreciate teaching people while others don't, so don't give up if you're turned down on a cold call, but don't cold call the same person twice.

As a bonus, read Kahn, Attix, and Hall, if you have time. For Nuclear Med, I'd recommend Cherry, and for Diagnostic Imaging I'd recommend Bushburg. Definitely start with Kahn as it is the easiest to digest IMO. I'm sure others have book recommendations as well. Though, I wouldn't bother until you've at least taken your entry level classical mechanics and E&M courses, even then a lot wont click until you've taken Quantum 1.

Edit: oh also experience in programming will help. Matlab and/or python seem to be base in our field, though C++ cant hurt.

Let me recommend An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits by Uri Alon. This book is extremely well-written and approaches cellular systems from the perspective of an engineer or physicist. It will help to orient you to the "big picture" of how cells work without swamping you in molecular details. Systems biology is a hot, emerging field at the intersection of molecular biology, biophysics, and computational biology. Feel free to PM me if you're interested in the field and want a few suggestions about which are the top labs.

I would recommend getting more information about the molecular details elsewhere. I haven't read Alberts, but it seems like a classic text (I often see it on bookshelves). I read Watson's Molecular Biology of the Gene, and thought it was quite good.

For a biochemical perspective, I recommend Stryer's Biochemistry, which covers many common biological molecules. It is a very readable classic and serves as a good reference text. It should give you an idea of how the molecular machines operate on a chemical level.

You can probably find these in your school's library.

Edit: Just realized this post is 3 months old (hah). Hope this helps nevertheless.

Was just looking at Corvidae books, there's also "Gifts of the Crow", haven't read yet but 4.5 stars on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Crow-Perception-Emotion-Thought/dp/1439198748/

Also Noah Strycker's "The Thing With Feathers" has a good chapter on Clark's Nutcracker memory, also corvids; they can remember thousands of cache locations, allowing them to breed in January in the mountains. That was the only corvid bit I think, but that whole book was good. https://www.amazon.com/Thing-Feathers-Surprising-Lives-Reveal/dp/159463341X/

Google around, find websites for university degree programs in biology, biochemistry, genetics, etc., and mine the syllabi for textbooks that are used. That would probably give you a decent seed list.

Read popular books for lay-people on biohacking and related topics, like Biopunk, Frankenstein's Cat, Regenesis, Life at the Speed of Light, A Crack in Creation, etc., and then use Google / Wikipedia to drill down on the topics you find discussed there.

One other book that has been recommended to me by actual experts from our local biohacking group is Molecular Biology of the Cell

Also.. It's fully possible for humans to create a mix that stops aging in whatever age someone is in? In theory?

I don't think anybody knows the answer to that yet.

Yea just check it out. It might seem that way from the perspective of cell bio and undergrad bio, but even great papers of hardcore cell bio have mathematical models for differentiation, signaling networks, and such. Bioinformatics has plenty of examples with graph theory, linear algebra, optimization problems, error functions. Also check out charlestondance's post.
Here are some good books.

Math Bio II

Biological circuits/networks

Yeah I couldn't find it either now I guess it's the bookstore for me lol. I also need another one here's the amazon link for it https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Biotechnology-3rd-William-Thieman/dp/0321766113

If it's modeling you're interested in, I found Uri Alon's Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits to be a good starting place

Regulation of the market means that if someone wants to sell you a drug for a specific use or purpose, they cannot do so without evidence of their claims.. This is the law.. That is regulation of the market. This is why there is the MMPR to get around this difficult issue.

Snake oil, man, snake oil..

I recommend reading this book. You dont seem to have a good understanding of the issues facing trying to regulate and tax Marijuana.

>If molecular consciousness and the molecular machinery that transports it (in the form of human beings) is governed by the same laws of physics that govern all objects in the cosmos, then like all configurations of mass and energy in the universe (our complexity does not exempt us from this) we are forces tending toward a state of interactional equilibrium.

This is far from a given. I'm thinking specifically of the work of Stuart Kauffman who would say:

>[Any] autonomous agent is something that can both reproduce itself and do at least one thermodynamic work cycle...[and] you cannot do a work cycle at equilibrium, meaning that the concept of an autonomous agent is inherently a non equilibrium concept.

In other words, equilibrium is static, it is non-dynamic; equilibrium is anathema to "life." Investigations provides a compelling enough of a case that I don't know that you can just assert the contrary without addressing how life would work (literally) in a system at equilibrium.

An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits seems like a popular choice. Does anyone here happen to know this one?

Have you read Fukuyama's book on transhumanism? (http://www.amazon.com/Our-Posthuman-Future-Biotechnology-ebook/dp/B000OI1AE8)

From the excerpt, I see that the characters seem to blame organized political religiosity for subduing biotech research. That's only half the story of what happened.

The truth is (that you can see from Fukuyama, who sat on President Bush's council on Bioethics) is that biotech threatens enlightenment values of egalitarianism just as much as it threatens certain religious conceptions of life. This is why it has been suppressed by the regulatory state. Fukuyama and others marshaled whatever argument they could find, including religious pandering, to justify this suppression of scientific research.

Their actions will be indirectly responsible for countless preventable deaths and the delay of the development of many important potential technologies.

The liberal tradition wears the pants in the West, and religious leaders follow their secular egalitarian masters, not the other way around. This is the only point I'd like to make; otherwise it appears to be an interesting premise for a novel.

Finally a question I can answer!

Entropy is a highly misunderstood concept and even many scientists struggle with misconceptions. Also, it can get into lots of subtle details when you start getting into the nitty gritty of it, and this can get into research-level questions, even in 2012. People have written books about the proper way to calculate it: http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-To-Entropy-Arieh-Ben-Naim/dp/9812707077

You have stumbled upon a subtle fact that many overlook: indeed it is the case that in the purely classical gas (particles can have any real-valued position and velocity), absolute thermodynamical entropy, in the information-theoretic view, is infinite.

You can still use the 'number of microstates' definition to arrive at a finite quantity, but you get something more similar to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_entropy

The basic idea is that you're calculating not the absolute entropy but the entropy relative to your units of measurement. The unit of entropy in SI is J/K, and the fact that you can have an infinite number of states for your particles is 'cancelled out' by the fact that your units can also take any real value. I hope this helps.

I make all of my students read it as well:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Systems-Biology-Mathematical-Computational/dp/1584886420

recent lecture at karolinska:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1G0_3lOiSY

and he plays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhncg6GXYq8

Books that discuss the subject:

http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/1501227742

http://www.amazon.com/The-Singularity-Is-Near-Transcend/dp/1452651833

It may be not "serious" enough or not "many", but it is being considered for sure.

I used an earlier edition of this in grad school: https://www.amazon.com/Pharmacognosy-Pharmacobiotechnology-James-Robbers/dp/068308500X/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=pharmacognosy+robbers&qid=1558891125&s=books&sr=1-3

It has lots of good info on medicinal plants.

Courses:

Take population genetics and computational biology. Population genetics focuses on dynamics of allele frequencies in different populations. Computational biology is anything from simulating networks of biochemical reactions to identifying patterns in DNA using hidden markov models.


Books:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Systems-Biology-Mathematical-Computational/dp/1584886420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299531700&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299531747&sr=1-1

More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement – Ramez Naam

Label your chemicals since you don't wanna mix them by accident. As for the storing methods, some chemicals are not compatible with each other and may cause some extreme reactions that will cost you money. This is why storing by alphabetical order is a no go. You have to put the chemicals that are of the same type together to minimize hazards.

Here's a book for basic lab skills. It's not exactly on acids and bases but it can help you out with most lab work.

The useful information is out there for anyone to google it. I also suggest you read the $10 book ALTERED GENES, TWISTED TRUTH: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public for an intro into what's wrong with genetically engineered foods and the agencies in charge of regulating them. (They are virtually unregulated by the FDA.)

Here are some links for you. Googling is so hard.

EPA advances approval of powerful weed killer for Dow’s ‘Agent Orange’ GMO crops

Dow and Monsanto Team Up on the Mother of All Herbicide Marketing Plans

Similar, and newer book by the same author: https://www.amazon.com/Biotechnology-Abolish-Suffering-David-Pearce-ebook/dp/B075MV9KS2

https://www.amazon.com/Career-Opportunities-Biotechnology-Drug-Development/dp/0879698802

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Biotechnology-Science-Market-Digital/dp/1119216176

https://www.amazon.com/Drugs-Discovery-Approval-Rick-Ng-ebook/dp/B00WWQQ842

https://www.amazon.com/Biotechnology-Entrepreneurship-Starting-Managing-Companies-ebook/dp/B00JVLHAQ6

This book goes over the basic ones:

http://www.amazon.com/Tutorial-Neural-Systems-Modeling-Anastasio/dp/0878933395/ref=sr_1_31?ie=UTF8&qid=1405082070&sr=8-31&keywords=computational+neuroscience

Here is a good book on this subject.

The argument therein is that entropy in both cases quantifies "missing information." Given a set of prior information, entropy tells us how much more information is necessary to specify the exact state of a system.

In thermodynamics, the prior information is the thermodynamic variables (temperature, pressure, etc), and the entropy tells us how much more information is necessary to specify the microstate.

About to graduate with a B.S. in Genetics and Cell Biology and I can tell you it's much more complex than that. Genetics is a very complex and strange field that is nowhere near being understood, even inserting a simple P.Glo gene (glow in the dark jellyfish gene) into E. col bacteria was extremely difficult and we had a 90% fail rate.

If you're interested in Genetic Engineering and Biotech type things and would like to learn more, then check out Frankenstein's cat. It provides information in a manner that even those who aren't involved in the field of Physical Sciences are able lto understand.
http://www.amazon.com/Frankensteins-Cat-Cuddling-Biotechs-Beasts/dp/0374158592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368318882&sr=8-1&keywords=frankenstein%27s+cat

> it still isn’t particularly healthy to have effectively extra hormones floating around in your body.

That is a broad claim, do you have a source? If I have "extra hormones" in my body from ingesting food, but the extra is within the standard fluctuation I have naturally, is that a bad thing? Remember, the dose makes the poison, and the body ingests miniscule amounts of BPA from food containers.

> a guy named Tim Oswald

Rather than an appeal to authority logical fallacy, I recommend you read this book which does touch on this specific topic: Food Myths Debunked: Why our food is safe. The author is a doctor of organic chemistry and provides references to back up his assertions.