Ishan Mukherjee’s Reviews > Essential Cell Biology > Status Update
Ishan Mukherjee
is on page 227 of 734
DNA is a case study in clever engineering. For example, H-bonds collectively make DNA very stable -- only boiling water-temperatures can separate it. How, then, does DNA replication occur at normal temperatures? Because H-bonds individually are weak, so unzipping a short length of DNA a few base pairs at a time requires little energy. Plus, A-T rich sites exist that are easy to pry apart and get replication going.
— Jul 26, 2024 02:58AM
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Ishan’s Previous Updates
Ishan Mukherjee
is on page 227 of 734
A Walter Lewin of biology would actually get some two-stranded rope and unwind it by tugging at the strands in opposite directions with his hands (or a machine) and show supercoiling, then nick one of the strands and show how the length being unwound rotates freely about the nick. This would illustrate how helicase and topoisomerase work together. In general, moving from animations to IRL demos could be worth it.
— Jul 26, 2024 01:16AM
Ishan Mukherjee
is on page 211 of 734
I've said before how good the illustrations are, but the quality really is ungodly. On page 211, the folded lagging strand picture clearly shows how the same DNA polymerase can be used to generate successive Okazaki fragments. I'd been wondering how DNA polymerases find their way to the next primer, but it turns out that all proteins are packaged together into one replication machine.
— Jul 24, 2024 04:23AM
Ishan Mukherjee
is on page 201 of 734
I skipped the first four chapters on biochemistry basics. About the book itself: copious diagrams, asides on how biological facts were discovered, skillful writing (great illustrations of ideas like DNA copying fidelity: "A human cell undergoing division will copy the equivalent of 1000 books like this one in about 8 hours and, on average, get no more than a few letters wrong.") -- what's not to like?
— Jul 22, 2024 05:41AM
