186 Book reviews / Biochemical Education 27 (1999) 182}189
After a general overview, the following topics are discussed in
separate chapters: getting the student started; designing and
planning of a project; the literature review; overseeing the data
collection; student motivation; acquisition and exercise of
judgement; thesis writing, preparation for the examination; and
launching the student's career. The authors do not just describe
anddiscuss the issues sensibly and clearly, they also provide
many fresh solutions and strategies for handling them. Thus,
the book is a very practical guide for interested readers. Bio-
chemists and other laboratory-based scientists who supervise
PhD candidates need have no qualms about the relevance and
value of the advice o!ered here for their work. Unfortunately,
the issue of scienti"c dishonesty gets very little attention, prob-
ably because it is rare although, alas, not unknown in recent
years.
This book is an important contribution on a topic that
concerns all faculty members in research universities. Every
research department should have at least one copy. Better still,
every supervisor of PhD students should have one and partake
of the advice provided therein.
F. Vella
PII: S0307-4412 (98) 00290-8
The University of Learning: Beyond Quality and Competence.
Edited by J. Bowden and F. Marton. 310 pp. Kogan Page,
London. 1998 &35. ISBN 0-7494-2292-00
Ask any academic involved in the administration of a univer-
sity what the functions of that institution are. The answer is
very likely to be: teaching, research and service to the commun-
ity. The university has been characterized as having these three
functions for almost a century. However, as this book argues
forcefully and with erudition, the function of teaching is to
produce learning at the individual level, that of original and
ground-breaking research is to produce new learning at the
collective level, while that of service provision is to produce
learning at a local or communal level. In e!ect therefore a uni-
versity has but one function and one mission, that of increasing
learning at all these three levels. This makes the university
(whether it consider itself to be largely concerned with research
or with teaching) an organization whose central focus is know-
ledge, its formation or construction as well as the capabilities by
which it is brought about.
Recent years have seen an almost upside}down (or in-
side}out) change, at least in some universities, as they move
from the traditional or historical teacher-centered to the
learner-centered approach to the learning process. It is unfortu-
nately not widely recognized that the latter approach is more
solidly based on the results of appropriate research on learning
than the former, pervasive as this is. Regrettably, conservative
resistance to this change is strong in certain quarters of most
universities I know of. This opposition frequently re#ects ignor-
ance or poor understanding of the results and implications of
serious investigations on what constitutes and what determines
learning at the individual level. This particular level is of
greatest concern to the majority of the population who, all too
often, understand a university as an institution that certi"es
transmission of knowledge to individuals for the purpose of
facilitating (if not guaranteeing) their gainful employment. For
many years this seems to have been the major interest of many
universities around the world.
he ;niversity of earning is a powerful analysis of what
learning (especially at the individual, but also at the collective,
level) is and of what is known about how it is brought about.
Both authors (Bowden is director of Educational Program
Improvement at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
in Australia, while Marton is professor of Education at the
University of Goteburg in Sweden) have published extensively
on the subject. Their major concern is to shift the focus
from teaching (where the universities have largely put it)
to learning (where it legitimately belongs). They repeatedly
emphasize that the most important form of learning is that
which enables us to see (or perceive with the mind's eye)
something (an object, idea or phenomenon) in a way, or
ways.di!erent from that, or those, we are accustomed to. Such
seeing involves discernment of the critical characteristics, vari-
ations between them and consideration of them all at the same
time. From this everything else #ows: the environment, the
object, the bringing about, the assessment, the application, the
quality, and the organization of learning. All of these topics are
treated in the book.
Although modest in presentation, this work represents the
best available scholarship in the "eld of learning. It has impor-
tant things to say as many universities gear themselves for the
many and signi"cant changes they will need to face to meet
better the challenges of the post-modern world. If their empha-
sis is not on learning but on delivery of curricula, then the
graduates they produce will inevitably be poorly prepared to
face unprecedented life and work situations. As the authors
suggest, but not forcefully enough in my opinion, more stress on
serious study within the universities of knowledge formation in
its di!erent domains, is an essential prerequisite for bringing
about e!ectively the University of Learning that out times
demand.
This is not light reading but a serious and instructive volume
written by researchers whose conclusions should be considered
by all who care about universities, their mission, and above all
the development and improvement of institutional learning in
students. Policy makers and administrators of universities, and
particularly teachers of all domains of knowledge (who are
really the architects of the learning environment and the man-
agers of the learning process) should obtain bene"cial insights
from it. For them to ignore this book and its perspective on
learning is to perpetuate the inadequacies of the teacher-
centered, transmission-of-knowledge approach to teaching and
learning which is no longer what is needed in our fast-changing
world.
F. Vella
PII: S0307-4412(98)00093-4
Genetics: A Molecular Approach (Third Edition) by T. A. Brown,
pp 469. Chapman and Hall, London, 1998. ISBN 0-412-79870-0
This elegant-looking paperback is divided into three parts.
Part one, entitled &Genes and gene expression', have twelve
chapters. After giving a historical overview of the development
 Book reviews / Biochemical Education 27 (1999) 182}189
of ideas about the gene, the author goes on to describe the
chemical nature of the gene, the structure of DNA, replication
of DNA, meaning of gene expression, structure of various types
of RNA, process of transcription, the genetic code, translation,
control of gene expression, mutations, DNA repair and recom-
binant DNA. Part two, entitled Genomes, has four chapters
covering structural aspects of prokaryotic, eukaryotic and hu-
man genomes. Part three, entitled &Studying genes', highlights
what Mendel discovered, how genes are mapped, cloned and
sequenced. Here the author tries to justify the need for the
human genome project and explains the objectives of the pro-
ject very clearly.
There are more than one hundred boxes, which are the
main attractions of the book. These boxes contain snippets
of information relevant to the chapters in which they are pres-
ent, they also contain biographies of some of the scientists
with their photographs. Each chapter also contains problems
which should enable the reader to assess his/her own under-
standing of the chapter. Answers are given for some of the
problems. At the end of each chapter, a list of articles/re-
views/books are provided for further reading. There is a gloss-
ary of terms used in molecular biology. It would be a useful
book for students of molecular biology, biochemistry and
biotechnology.
As a biochemist, I found certain minor inaccuracies. Figure
3.5 depicts the structure of a &short' polynucleotide in which
the triphosphate group attached to the 5-carbon, with b
and c phosphate still in place. On page 35, the author
considers hydrogen bonds are the only attractive forces
between the two polynucleotides of the double helix. The hy-
drophobic interactions and van der Waal's forces, which are
also instrumental in stabilising the double helix, should have
been mentioned. Also circular DNA, super-cooling of DNA,
triple-stranded DNA and quadruplex DNA "nd no place in this
book. But these should not take away the credit for a wounder-
ful e!ort.
C. V. Anand
PII: S0307-4412(98)00262-3
Practical Skills in Biology Second Edition By A. Jones,
R. Reed and J. Weyers. Longman, Essex, UK. pp 292. 1998.
ISBN 0-582-29885-7
This book is meant for students of biology. It is intended to
help them make a systematic study of the subject and succeed in
the examination. The approach is creditable; within the eight
sections, the chapters have been developed sequentially and
pictorially. Basic principles of chemistry, procedures to make
solutions, use of balances, pH meters and preparation of bu!er
solutions form the contents of the "rst section. In the second
section, units and principles of measurements, drawing of ob-
servations are covered. The third section describes how the
samples of animals are identi"ed, collected, "xed and preserved,
principles of microscopy, cell culture, photography and imag-
ing, measuring growth and responses of multicellular organ-
isms. Advanced laboratory techniques * which include im-
munological methods, enzyme studies, genetics, use of radioac-
tive isotopes, spectroscopy and chromatography are covered in
187
the "fth section. In the sixth section, the authors describe how
to analyse and preserve scienti"c data. The data may be repre-
sented in either graphical or tabular form. Some calculations
involving numerical examples with hints are explained. Basic
statistical calculations like standard deviation, standard error,
coe$cient of variation, distributions and the t-test are covered
in this section. The last two sections provide details about
information technology and communicating information.
World Wide Web, word processing, database and general as-
pects of scienti"c writing are explained. Some useful tips to
write essays, practical and project work, literature surveys and
reviews, organising a poster display, giving an oral presentation
and preparation for an examination are also provided. Both the
teacher and the student of biology will gain a lot from this
book.
C. V. Anand
PII: S0307-4412(98)00280-5
Cell and Tissue Culture: Laboratory Procedures in Biotechnol-
ogy Edited by A. Doyle and J.B. Gri7ths 332 pp. Wiley, Chiches-
ter, UK. 1998. &55. ISBN 0-471-98255-5
This laboratory manual describes many of the techniques
involved in animal cell culture and although aimed primarily at
biotechnologists would also be very useful in any cell culture
laboratory. Cultured cells are now used a great deal in biotech-
nological processes, especially for the production of proteins,
although there are many other uses. The market for mon-
oclonal antibodies for example is worth millions of dollars
every year. This book provides background to the culture of
many di!erent types of cells on both the lab and the industrial
scale.
Chapter 1 deals with cells lines, identity testing, mycoplasma
detection and the elimination of contamination generally, and
Chapter 2 is about cell quanti"cation and gives methodology
for haemocytometer counting, the MTT assay, the LDH assay,
and so on. The techniques are described in easy-to-follow
recipe-book format. Whether cell culture itself can easily be
learned from a book of recipes is more di$cult to say: most
people would agree that learning in the laboratory of an expert
probably is preferable.
Chapter 3 deals with media, sera and plasticware (the culture
environment), and the latter part moves on to three-dimen-
sional systems which are important in very large scale culture.
Chapter 4, on the &&biochemistry'' of cells in culture, deals with
the various parameters that are important in all cell culture and
which are vital to control in large-scale processes (e.g. cells
growth rates, detoxi"cation, oxygenation, mixing). Chapter
5 continues the theme of large-scale culture, and discusses
scale-up, roller bottles and spinner #asks, chemostats, hybrid-
oma culture, vaccine production, microcarriers and control
processes. Chapter 6 brie#y deals with regulatory issues.
About 43 contributing authors are named, the majority of
them from biotech companies. Despite this the whole text has
been put together rather skilfully, with a uniform style through-
out and most importantly, the reasons for doing things
are usually given. The book comes in spiral-bound format,