Volume 1

Gene expression / Benjamin Lewin.

  • Lewin, Benjamin.
Date:
1974-1977
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Gene expression / Benjamin Lewin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/668 (page VII)
    PREFACE When I began to write this book, I intended it to be a revision of The Molecular Basis of Gene Expression. But it soon became obvious that a revision alone could not serve the purpose of describing our present ideas of how genes are expressed in the bacterial cell. So much has been discovered since 1969 that little now remains of the manuscript written then; this is, there fore, essentially a new book. In the preface to my earlier book, I asserted that although important problems remain to be solved, it seems likely that our present conceptual framework will retain its validity, and future research result, by and large, in additions and in changes of detail rather than in basic revision. But even though this point of view has been vindicated in the sense that research in the past few years has indeed added to rather than replaced our previous ideas, so much has been discovered that the additions have overwhelmed our previous framework. The view of molecular biology which this book presents therefore owes as much to research performed during this decade as before. Indeed, I can make no claim to provide any enduring account of molecular biology. No doubt our present ideas, seemingly sophisticated, will themselves appear outdated only too rapidly. The aim of this book is therefore to give a report of our progress in explaining how genes are expressed and controlled in bacteria. The second volume of Gene Expression attempts to provide an analogous account of our more primitive knowledge of eucaryotic cells. An exception to this general division of material is that since the mechanisms of protein and probably nucleic acid synthesis seem to be similar in all organisms, these processes are discussed largely in this volume so that the second volume can concentrate upon the features peculiar to the control of gene activity in eucaryotic cells. Discussion in this book is for the most part devoted to the systems of bacteria although some of the more general systems of bacterio phages are also included. The starting point of this book is the fusion of genetic and biochemical concepts into the definition of the gene as a length of DNA which codes for a single protein chain. The level of exposition is thus moderately advanced and assumes some familiarity with the techniques of microbial genetics and vii