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Untangling the Double Helix
DNA Entanglement and the Action of the DNA Topoisomerases

By James C. Wang, Harvard University

© 2009 • 233 pp., illus., appendices, index
Paperback • $46.00 • ISBN 978-087969879-9

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We Can Sleep Later: Alfred D. Hershey and the Origins of Molecular Biology

Edited By Franklin W. Stahl, University of Oregon, Eugene

© 2000 • 357 pp., illus., indexes
Hardcover • $41 $20.50 • ISBN 978-087969567-5

An absorbing portrait of the pioneering molecular biologist best known for demonstrating that DNA is the genetic component of phages, through essays and reminiscences from twenty–three distinguished scientists whose work and careers were influenced by the man and his science.

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What a Time I Am Having: Selected Letters of Max Perutz

Edited By Vivien Perutz

© 2009 • 506 pp., illus., index
Hardcover • $40.00 • ISBN 978-087969864-5

Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz’s voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. They chronicle Perutz’s adventurous life through his own vivid, erudite and humorous pen, documenting the hopes, roadblocks and moments of elation of his sixty-year quest to understand the molecular biology of hemoglobin. The first great step in this quest — unraveling the molecular structure of hemoglobin — earned Perutz the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Narrated against a backdrop of family and friends, politics and war, literature, travels, and Max’s beloved mountains, these letters provide rare insight into the thoughts of a remarkable and very human scientist, and delightful sketches of some of the people he encountered. Starting with lively letters to a girlfriend written in his youth in Vienna and the impressions of a young scientist in Cambridge, the letters progress to the desperate pleas of an “enemy alien” interned in Canada during World War II. The diary of Perutz’s subsequent super-secret war work for the British to build a floating ice airstrip in the North Atlantic, ardent campaigning letters to scientists and politicians, and self-deprecating stories of his own mishaps written to amuse his children and grandchildren are some of the many highlights of these fascinating letters, unique in the annals of recent scientific history. This book is a companion to Georgina Ferry’s Max Perutz and the Secret of Life. Together these volumes provide a portrait of an extraordinary character in the development of molecular biology.

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Wnt Signaling

Edited By Roel Nusse, Stanford University Medical Center; Xi He, Children’s Hospital Boston; Renée van Amerongen, Stanford University Medical Center

© 2013 • 454 pp., illus. (75 4C and 6 B&W), index
Hardcover • $135 • ISBN 978-1-936113-23-1

Wnt proteins are signaling molecules that play critical roles during embryonic development and in the regeneration of adult tissues. They bind to Frizzled and LRP family receptors on the cell surface, triggering a series of events that cause β-catenin to enter the nucleus and activate transcription factors that control cell fate and cell proliferation. Mutations in components of the Wnt pathway lead to developmental defects and are common in cancer.

Written and edited by experts in the field, this collection from Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology covers all aspects of canonical Wnt signaling, as well as β-catenin-independent Wnt signaling and cross-talk with other pathways. The contributors examine the numerous Wnt ligands; their production, secretion, and interactions with components of the extracellular environment; and details of the downstream signaling pathways that mediate the effects of Wnt proteins on cells. The roles of Wnt signaling in stem cell self-renewal, cell polarity, body-axis specification, wound healing, and other aspects of normal development and physiology are also covered.

This volume includes discussion of Wnt signaling in cancer, skeletal defects, neurological disorders, and other human disease states. Thus, it is an indispensable reference for cell and developmental biologists as well as those, especially in the fields of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, who are interested in targeting the Wnt pathway for therapeutic purposes.

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Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced

By Michael Ashburner

© 2006 • 107 pp., illus.
Hardcover • $19.95 $9.97 • ISBN 978-087969802-7

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The Writing Life of James D. Watson

By Errol C. Friedberg, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

© 2005 • 193 pp., illus., index
Hardcover • $26 $5.20 • ISBN 978-087969700-6

James Watson's fame as a scientist and research leader overshadows his considerable achievements as an innovator in the form and style of scientific communication. This book surveys Watson's books and essays from the perennially best–selling The Double Helix through his classic textbooks of the 1960s and 70s, polemics on ethical questions about genetic technology, to more recent works of autobiography.

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Yeast Intermediary Metabolism

By Dan G. Fraenkel, Harvard Medical School

© 2011 • 434 pp., illus. (138 b/w), appendix, index
Hardcover • $128 • ISBN 978-0-879697-97-6

The intermediary metabolism of small molecules is the meat and potatoes of cell function. The pathways and modes of obtaining energy, degradation and utilization of exogenous organic nutrients, and formation of the building blocks of the main macromolecules were a major focus of research in biology from the turn of the 20th century into the 1970s. Other matters have come to prominence, but the field is active, with interesting problems that are central to biology and medicine. Molecular biology developed through the use of one bacterium, Eschericha coli, with the saying “What’s true for E. coli is true for elephants.” In recent years, an analogous workhorse has been the eukaryotic microbe baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used in many studies of cell biology common to multicellular organisms. This book explains metabolism as based on Saccharomyces. The topics include central metabolic pathways; catabolism; fermentation; respiration; biosynthesis of small molecules including cofactors; the metabolism of lipids, polysaccharides, and storage molecules; inorganic ions; transport and compartments; the global analysis of metabolism; and issues of metabolic toxicity. It can be used in courses and as a reference book for research investigators.