Lab Ref, Volume 1: A Handbook of Recipes, Reagents, and Other Reference Tools for Use at the Bench

This book is a handy benchtop source of recipes and information needed for common laboratory protocols. It has an expanded Web site section with sources for biological materials, databases for acquiring and annotating genomic and proteomic data, and links to downloadable software — now available for the first time in paperback.

Lab Dynamics: Management and Leadership Skills for Scientists, Second Edition

The second edition of Lab Dynamics now offers eleven thematically focused chapters specifically designed to help working scientists develop and improve their management and leadership skills. Every chapter from the first edition has been revised, updated, and supplemented with new illustrations and graphics.

Metabolism and Disease

This volume is based on presentations by world-renowned investigators who gathered at the 76th Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology. It reviews the latest advances in our understanding of metabolism and disease, including research on fat, exercise and rhythms; insulin resistance and sensitivity; lifespan, aging and cancer; regulation and dysregulation of metabolism; signaling and gene regulation; environment and sensing; metabolic reprogramming; clocks and intermediary metabolism; metabolism and cancer; and autophagy, timing and small RNAs.

The Biology of Alzheimer Disease

“Anyone following the primary literature on Alzheimer’s disease research knows that keeping abreast of this rapidly evolving field has become a Herculean task. More and more data are being published on ever-diversifying lines of research, and they are not made any clearer by discrepancies among studies and debate about what is important. It’s a challenge for newcomers and Alzheimerologists alike to see the big picture of what has been learned and where the field is heading....The Biology of Alzheimer Disease, published in 2012 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, attempts to help with that....The editors and authors address a broad audience of people from across biomedical research, particularly students and junior researchers, but also investigators in related fields of science and those with a passing interest in Alzheimer’s...The total collection stands out for pulling together a broad swath of leading scientists internationally to work toward the shared goal of articulating what is the agreed-upon state of the art in their field.”

A new type of online review journal

• Spanning the complete spectrum of the molecular life sciences

• Article collections that build month by month

• Written and commissioned by experts in each field

Read these essential papers in this month’s issue:

The matrisome: Richard Hynes catalogs ECM constituents.
Completion of genome sequences for many organisms allows a reasonably complete definition of the complement of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. In mammals this “core matrisome” comprises ˜300 proteins. In addition there are large numbers of ECM-modifying enzymes, ECM-binding growth factors, and other ECM-associated proteins. Read the full text.

Steven Benner discusses strategies for studying RNA’s role in the origin of life.
No community-accepted scientific methods are available today to guide studies on what role RNA played in the origin and early evolution of life on Earth. Further, a definition-theory for life is needed to develop hypotheses relating to the “RNA First” model for the origin of life. Read the full text.

Synaptic vesicle exocytosis: Thomas Südhof reviews how neurotransmitters are released at the synaptic cleft.
Presynaptic nerve terminals release neurotransmitters by synaptic vesicle exocytosis. Membrane fusion mediating synaptic exocytosis and other intracellular membrane traffic is affected by a universal machinery that includes SNARE (for “soluble NSF-attachment protein receptor”) and SM (for “Sec1/Munc18-like”) proteins. Read the full text.

Visit here for this month’s complete table of contents and to learn more.

Genetic Mechanisms: Structure and Function
(CSH Symposium, Vol. XXI, 1956)

There is a story that a reader of T. H. Morgan’s Embryology and Genetics complained that he had been disappointed by the book—he had expected to find a discussion of the genetic basis of embryological differentiation but the topics were treated separately. Morgan replied that he had written exactly what the title promised: “I talked about embryology and I talked about genetics.” This separation of genetics and embryology was still evident in 1956 but as Demerec wrote in the foreword to the Symposium volume, “Recent developments...indicate that we may be on the verge of bridging the gap that now separates genetics and embryology.” (Dobzhansky). (read more)

Hundreds of important advances in biology were announced, debated, and distilled at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia. These meetings, held each year on the tranquil grounds of one of the world’s leading research institutes, have been notable events in biomedical research since 1933. Now this essential archive, dating from 1933 to 2003, is available online. Among highly influential volumes is the 1956 meeting “Genetic Mechanisms: Structure and Function” (Vol. XXI), above is an excerpt from the exclusive new online introduction to this volume. (read more)