Description

I'm Lauren (or "Loz", hence the blog title) and I am a 19 year old student currently studying Human Sciences at the University of Oxford. I aspire to be involved in a career concerning science and media, so this blog is a way for me to gain experience communicating science in an informative but accessible way. While there are some posts concerning current news stories or articles I've written, it is mostly intended to be an educational blog, with a focus on genetics, as this is my key area of interest and I hope to do a masters in genetics after my undergraduate degree. My aim is to explain genetics to a target audience with perhaps little prior scientific knowledge and an interest in furthering their understanding in this field. The posts are not necessarily chronological and pictures used are mostly sourced from the internet (although are hand-drawn in some cases). If you are interested in reading articles I've written, search "article" and it should come up with them in numbered order! I hope this blog proves to be useful in some capacity; let me know if you have any questions and any feedback or advice is always very welcome!

Tuesday, 12 May 2015

Key Texts for Genetics

Below is a list of the main books I have found most helpful for my studies, from hardest to easiest (so choose the level you think is most appropriate to your current understanding if you are interested in reading around the subject further).

1) Hartwell, L., 2008. Genetics: From Genes to Genomes. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

This book is very challenging in some places and is definitely not for someone who is just dabbling in genetics as there are much simpler books out there!

2) Griffiths, A., 2005. Introduction to Genetic Analysis. Basingstoke: W.H. Freeman and Company.

Whilst aimed at around the same level as book 1 in terms of content, I found this book was much better at explaining most of the topics and I also much preferred the layout, but this may just be personal preference.

3) Sudbery, P., 2002. Human Molecular Genetics. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.

This book is much less of a textbook-style than 1 and 2 and is therefore much thinner and generally smaller, so seems less daunting and for the most part explains things well. However, in terms of breadth of topics, it doesn't cover nearly as much and focuses on genetic diseases and aspects of genetics specific to just humans so is not as good of an overview.

4) Fletcher, H., Hickey, I., 2013. Genetics. 4th ed. Garland Science, Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

In my opinion, this is the best book by far in terms of balance between complexity and how easy it is to understand. Again, this is probably best for those with a basic level of genetics knowledge but it explains everything really really well and covers nearly every topic you are likely to need.

5) Rodden Robinson, T., 2011. Genetics for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons.

Similar to book 4, this goes into slightly less complexity but I feel is not as well presented as 4. However, a great book for beginners.

6) Hocking, S., 2008. OCR A2 Biology Student Book. s.l.:Heinemann.

Although this is an A-level book, the genetics section is brilliant for those just starting out as a basic backdrop of the main concepts of genetics, or as a refresher for those who haven't studied genetics for a while.





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