One of my favorite molecular biology books of all time is "36 Lectures in Biology" by S.E. Luria [1]. Luria was a great biologist and he wrote this book in a colloquial style based on Lecture materials from his MIT course in the 70's. It's accessible but deep and includes hand-drawn line illustrations and several appendixes on thermodynamics & chemistry to get newcomers up to speed.
It provides an unpretentious, solid introduction to core molecular biology theory, written in a personal manner by one of the 20th century's greatest biologists. And it's only $5 w/ shipping on amazon.
Read it, then go watch some of the short videos [3] by iGEM teams on their projects to get a sense of what's made possible by the synthetic biology approach.
It provides an unpretentious, solid introduction to core molecular biology theory, written in a personal manner by one of the 20th century's greatest biologists. And it's only $5 w/ shipping on amazon.
Read it, then go watch some of the short videos [3] by iGEM teams on their projects to get a sense of what's made possible by the synthetic biology approach.
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=QUZRAAAAMAAJ [2] http://www.amazon.com/36-Lectures-Biology-S-Luria/dp/0262620... [3] http://igem.org/Videos/Community_Videos