Genetics For Dummies 2e

This was a good overview of genetics. The author has the authority of an expert and yet writes in a very readable style. Her historical anecdotes are interesting and she covers a lot of ground.My one complaint is that the text is constantly interrupted by parenthetical references (e.g., flip back to chapter 11 for our discussion of...) to other places (e.g., see the sidebar on...) in the text that (e.g., read the section on... in this chapter) relate to what is being discussed. As a consequence it is harder to follow the text than it should be. I read this in a Kindle edition and kind of hoped that these were marginal notes in the paper version of the book. Eventually I was conditioned to try to skip all the parentheses I came to - which would be a mistake because some contained necessary information.

I bought this for a college class: Human Genetics for non-biology majors. The information is helpful, however, the author is constantly urging the reader to "flip to this section for more details," or "look back at this chapter to learn more." Sometimes, the author even will tell the reader to look back on the section that was just read "for more details." It's more than annoying and redundant, and it's really distracting when you're trying to study.

After borrowing this book from a friend I purchased for myself. I started working in genetics and used this all the time while learning all the terms. I would say it's probably not for someone who has no exposure to science (I'd already taken college level biology and biochemistry and a chemistry degree)I like that it's easily broken down and has extensive references. Would recommend as a reference book for those continuing learning.

Being new to genetics I found the book very useful in covering a lot of material. However, the book has one very bothersome attribute. It constantly interrupts the flow of reading by referring to both previous and future sections. I found this very annoying and distracting. The author is attempting to make each chapter independent, like a reference, but it turns into a flaw and fails at readability. A book for Dummies typically would assume reading most section in order, why refer to past chapters as a refresher (this is the purpose of an index) and why continually refer to future sections, prematurely (the point of the TOC). A little would be acceptable but it's just done way too much. IMHO

I recently had my DNA sequenced and analyzed and have become interested in genetics beyond just reading the reports. I purchased this book to get an introduction to and deeper understanding of the reports I am reading. I never liked the "Dummies" title on books but have found that this book is packed with exactly the type and level of material I have been looking for without having to dive into a college level genetics textbook.

This book written very well and understandable even for the interested lay person. It could use some revisions since some of the statements are clearly outdated. Also, whoever prepared the graphs and illustrations for the kindle version did a pretty bad job - the resolution is really bad, sometimes you can hardly read them.

I found myself in a very complicated genetics course that I wasn't prepared for. Reading portions of this book allowed me to better understand lectures and the assigned readings (which would have otherwise been above my head).

My first For Dummies book was "Calculus Essentials for Dummies" and it was five stars in explaining a difficult subject well. "Genetics for Dummies" does not do as well. The author attempts to make it easy to jump around the book to get detailed explanations of some subtopic of genetics. What happens in doing that is a good share of the text are references to other sections of the book. After a dozen or so times of that it got pretty frustrating. Also in a book of this type more illustrations is helpful, especially when the text is dry reading.

My primary interest is in philosophy of mind, which these days needs a more than cursory understanding of neuroscience, for which I bit the bullet and turned to the magnificent  Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain , which I have now read twice through. However, references to gene expression became increasingly intrusive towards the end of this book, as well as in other contexts, and I decided that I needed to get at least a basic understanding of what exactly that meant. I knew that DNA held genes, which code RNA, which is then used to make proteins, but little more than that. I've never turned to a For Dummies book before, but considering the kind of depth of knowledge I was looking for I could see no harm in giving it a try. It turned out to be exactly what I needed. It gave me an understanding of the chain of processes through which inheritance operates, and a basic idea as to how different cells come to create the different proteins that determins their function. It doesn't go as far as telling you what proteins really do or how they work, but then that's not genetics but molecular biology. Not only did the book explain the issues that had formed my initial enquiry, but it also rekindled my awe and wonder at the workings of the living cell that had began with my first boyhood adventures with a microscope, and at the astonishing levels of detail of the understanding of the molecular machinery inside cells that modern science has made available to us. This then is where this book has really earned its stars; as a platform from which to jump into the deep end of molecular biology, as I am now ploughing my way through the similarly magnificent  The Cell: A Molecular Approach . Incidentally, should anyone be interested in just getting a taster for molecular biology, without engaging with the full package, then I cannot recommend enough David Goodsell's  The Machinery of Life ; a small book crammed with astonishing factoids about life inside the cell, and the most beautiful hand-painted illustrations. The essential five-star value of this book to me, then, is that the preconditions for reading The Cell were my long rusted A-level chemistry and the basic genetics gleaned from this.The book is broadly divided into four broad sections. The first deals with a very basic introduction to the cell and the rules of heredity as far as they had been inferred before the identification of DNA as the determinant of heredity, and the molecular carrier of the instructions for building all living systems. The second section is the one I personally found the most absorbing. This describes, to a basic level, the exquisite biochemical machinery responsible for the replication, that is copying, of DNA that underlies the development of the embryo, growth and the constant process of cellular repair and replacement that we are undergoing every moment of our lives. It then goes on to explain how the information stored in DNA is organised into genes and alleles, and how more exquisite machines transcribe the information in those genes into messenger RNA; how that RNA is processed and, to a very simplistic level, the mechanisms by which messenger RNA is decoded to construct the roughly couple of million proteins that constitute the machinery of (human) life.The third section is devoted to the health implications of genetic science, covering topics such as inherited disease, the darkly beautiful world of viruses, from the common cold to HIV, and that catastrophic consequence of genetics gone wrong, cancer. It may be that many people coming to this book will be those unfortunate enough to be living with such conditions or their loved ones, who are wanting to gain a layperson's insight into the biology of these illnesses. There is also a passing mention of where things stand in relation to the promise of future gene therapies. The fourth section is devoted to the wider social implications of genetic science, covering issues such as cloning, forensics and the law, GM foods, stem-cell research, etc. It is my opinion that anyone who thinks they have strong opinions on these matters should have at least the basic scientific grounding that a book like this provides. Anything less amounts, in my view, to little more than superstition.To those disappointed reviewers who found the book too difficult I would say the following. Technical topics can only be simplified so far. New words or jargon are legitimately coined in order to use one word in order to avoid having to repeat the same three, four or ten words. If one finds that one is reading but no longer feels they understand what is being said, then the trick is to go back to the last place where one did feel they knew what was going on. Then move forward slowly until finding the exact sentence at which befuddlement begins. Then think a bit. Try and consider all the possible things the difficult sentence might mean, and then try and think, on the basis of what you have read before the one correct meaning the sentence must have. If this doesn't work, then go back to the beginning of the paragraph, or section, or chapter, or the whole book. This applies to any kind of technical reading, whether a layperson's introduction or the most abstruse scholarly paper. If this process does not work then the book is badly written. If jargon is introduced without being defined then the book is badly written. If it has though then it is up to the reader to keep reminding themselves of the meanings of new words until they have become familiar. The whole point of the For Dummies series is that the have been tested out on typical readers and corrected until the determined reader has been given everything they need to fully comprehend the contents. I honestly think that this book is fit for that purpose. Neuroscience: Exploring the BrainThe Cell: A Molecular ApproachThe Machinery of Life

As my chemistry/physics/biology lessons finished when I left school back in 1960 my knowledge on genetics is a bit thin on the ground. This book I found to be quite hard work as the dummy it was written for left school a few years after me with slightly more knowledge of DNA etc than I was taught (which is not difficult!!). However I am persevering and may eventually move up from being a 100% dummy as far as genetics is concerned!!

Don't be fooled by the "dummies" bit; this book is a handy text even for first year university students. It takes you through every aspect of studying genetics in an amazingly easy to understand format that solidifies all the learning already done in lectures and lab work. I have used it like a work book and taken notes while reading it and have found it extremely helpful before and during lectures. Great stuff. Hopefully it'll help me pass the module!

Very useful book that is helping me get through a degree in Animal Science and Welfare with a statistics module!! Very easy to read and great explanations.

It's for dummies. I still find it a bit complicated.