Recommended Biochemistry Books?

[Waynish]

I've some physics and chemistry knowledge, but I would like my biochemistry base knowledge to be more solid. Any textbooks that are particularly accurate or notable?

 

[Diokine]

4th phase of water, cells gels and the engines of life by Gerald Pollack, and works by Gilbert Ling and Albert Szent-Gyorgi. Particularly Bioenergetics by Szent-Gyorgi.

 

[Travis]

I have read The Association Induction Hypothesis by Gilbert Ling. It's big; like 600 pages. This is probably the only text that does not speak about membrane pumps as if they were actually real.

Very good stuff. It's mostly about proteins and ions though; so it's somewhat limited in it's scope. However, it goes to great depths on this topic, deeper than probably anything.

It is brilliant.

 

[Amazoniac]

Book Recommendations

 

[ecstatichamster]

Ray recommended
Guyton and Hall

Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology, 12e: 9781416045748: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com

 

[member 2106]

Ray recommended
Guyton and Hall

Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology, 12e: 9781416045748: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com

Where did he recommend this? I've got a hold of it, and it's really good, if extremely dense.

 

[burtlancast]

Ray recommended
Guyton and Hall

Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology, 12e: 9781416045748: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com

Good catch...

"When A.C. Guyton wrote his textbook of medical physiology (the most widely used text in the world) in the 1950s, it was trash; as it was studied and applied by generations of physicians, it was still trash. The most compliant patients who bought their treatment from the most authoritative, Guytonesque, doctors were buying their own disability and death."
Ray Peat Interviews Revisited | Vision and Acceptance

 

[Kyle M]

Last year at my university they were throwing out a bunch of periodicals and I snagged a couple "annals of the review of biochemistry something something" editions from the 1950s and 60s. You might be able to find something like that, and they are written in a surprisingly Peat-esque style, with more narrative and open-mindedness. The regular textbooks for college students today are just indoctrination texts, but it might be worth it to read one just to know where the biomedical establishment is coming from.

 

[Travis]

I read most of this. It is called Horizons in Biochemistry. It is an Albert Szent-Gyorgi dedicatory volume. It numerous authors, all writing about their own area of expertise and interest.

It's kind of piecemeal, but it is interesting. It's free and the pdf is available through the link above.

 

[Travis]

You can also get Szent-Gyorgyi's Bioenergetics online for free in a PDF format by visiting scribd.com.

I am halfway through, and it is okay. I think Gilbert Ling does a way better job in explaining ATP and muscle, and I would simply skip those chapters in Bioenergetics and read Gilbert Ling's presentations instead.

For example, Szent-Gyorgyi talks about the "high energy phosphate bond". This is rather absurd, as Gilbert Ling will explain:

To wit, the so-called "high energy phosphate bond" does not contain high energy. Podolsky and Morales's conclusion was based on the more precise measurement of the heat of hydrolysis of ATP and a (judicious) correction for the heat of neutralization of the acid liberated during the hydrolysis (Table 3). Thermodynamic analyses led George and Rutman to a similar conclusion: that there is no high energy in the so-called high-energy phosphate bond.

A misnomer.

But Szent-Gyorgyi has good things to say about photochemistry and phosphorescence. Bioenergetics is a good primer on the topic, but I don't think that his articles on muscle contraction are worth reading in light of Gilbert Ling's work.

He used a weird unit in his book: the millimicron: mμ.

This is of course equivalent to the nanometer, and most people just use nanometer, or nm.

But I kind of like to millimicron. I think that I will start using it.

And the book is short and easy to read.

 

[Parsifal]

You can also get Szent-Gyorgyi's Bioenergetics online for free in a PDF format by visiting scribd.com.

I am halfway through, and it is okay. I think Gilbert Ling does a way better job in explaining ATP and muscle, and I would simply skip those chapters in Bioenergetics and read Gilbert Ling's presentations instead.

For example, Szent-Gyorgyi talks about the "high energy phosphate bond". This is rather absurd, as Gilbert Ling will explain:

A misnomer.

But Szent-Gyorgyi has good things to say about photochemistry and phosphorescence. Bioenergetics is a good primer on the topic, but I don't think that his articles on muscle contraction are worth reading in light of Gilbert Ling's work.

He used a weird unit in his book: the millimicron: mμ.

This is of course equivalent to the nanometer, and most people just use nanometer, or nm.

But I kind of like to millimicron. I think that I will start using it.

And the book is short and easy to read.

Would be interesting if you start a blog to explain your readings and making it simpler to other people that find it very difficult .

 

[Travis]

I found another book just now. This is a biochemistry textbook written for medical students, and lacks the annoying and corny illustrations characteristic of most books on this subject:

Murray, Robert K. "Harper's illustrated biochemistry." (2009)
​

I would take this over Lehninger any day. They use the somewhat unrealistic Hawthorn projection for carbohydrates, but then make‐up for this by including a steroid in the 'chair conformation.'

click to embiggen: Steroid shown in the most realistic projection, showing the 109° carbon bond angles.​

 

[Amazoniac]

˙

 

[Travis]

Broken link (↑). Here is an Adobe Acrobat web .pdf of the 26th edition:

Robert K. Murray. "Harper's Illustrated Biochemistry." (2003).