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Pain-Free Biochemistry: An Essential Guide for the Health Sciences

ISBN: 978-0-470-72296-1

December 2009

352 pages

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Description
"It’s not every day that one picks up a textbook that can claim to occupy a unique niche, given the multitude of scientific textbooks that are vying for a medical readership. However, with the recent publication of 'Pain-Free Biochemistry: An Essential Guide for the Health Sciences', which is specifically aimed at students of medicine and nursing, one could be left wondering just why nobody thought of this sooner.” –Irish Medical Times, September 14, 2010

If you are an undergraduate nursing or healthcare student about to embark on a short course in biochemistry and feel daunted by the prospect because you’ve done very little chemistry in the past, found it difficult or studied it so long ago you’ve forgotten it all, then this is the book for you. Equally, if clinical practice has brought you back to biochemistry just when you were hoping you could forget it all, this could be your lifeline!

Having taught biochemistry to all sorts of students, from nurses to chemical engineers, for more than 30 years, Professor Paul Engel knows how to take the ‘pain’ out of your studies. For those who are a bit wobbly on molecules, bonds, ions, etc. this text also has just enough supporting chemistry slipped in where appropriate to help things make sense. Accessible, enjoyable to read and packed with a wealth of clinical examples from heart disease to cancer and blood clotting to antibiotics, this handy textbook will reveal how biochemistry is fundamental to clinical practice and everyday life. Drugs, diet, disease, DNA – it all comes down to biochemistry.

Key Features:

  • Easy to digest: ‘Bite sized’ topics lead you through essential biochemistry without going into intimidating detail. 
  • Doesn’t assume you’ve studied chemistry before:  Focuses on key concepts and provides all the basic chemistry you might need. 
  • Colour coded: Specially designed so you can see, at a glance, which chapters focus on underpinning chemistry, which on basic biochemistry and which on clinical applications. 
  • Clinically relevant:Topical examples throughout the text show how getting to grips with biochemistry will help you succeed in healthcare practice. 
  • Reinforces your learning: Includes numerous self-test questions with answers throughout. 
  • Companion website includes:
    • A complete set of figures from within the book.
    • Extended MCQs with answers and further explanation where relevant.
About the Author
Professor Paul Engel is professor of biochemistry at University College Dublin. He has had extensive experience teaching biochemistry to undergraduate and postgraduate biochemistry, biology,  medicine, engineering and nursing students, in his current post at UCD and at the universities of Sheffield, Oxford and Hong Kong,. He is on the Editorial Board of Biochemical Journal, and Essays in Biochemistry, and is the author of the highly successful textbook: Enzyme Kinetics (Outline Series) published by Chapman and Hall.

Professor Paul Cowper Engel: School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science, Conway Institute, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

From AQ:
Wrote (some years ago!) a highly successful little book in the Chapman & Hall Outline Studies in Biology series - Enzyme Kinetics, the Steady State Approach. This was their best-selling title, sold fairly rapidly out of two printing of 6000 copies each and has been stolen from many libraries since it went out of print!  It did not continue because of a dispute between myself, wanting to stick with my readers, impecunious students, and the publishers, who wanted a fatter money-spinning (?) volume that students would not be able to afford.   At long last I'm working on a new version.

I also have about 160 full papers on a wide variety of enzyme-related topics ranging from chemistry to medicine and protein evolution. My current research group of about 15, supported primarily by a Senior Research Fellowship from Science Foundation Ireland, is working on novel biocatalysis through protein engineering and random mutagenesis, protein folding, anti-malarial drugs etc.

I have been lecturing in university biochemistry courses since 1970 in the UK and in Ireland to a wide variety of students - science, medicine, chemical engineering, nursing and have had ample opportunity to realise the distinctive problems of different groups on confronting what is undoubtedly a complex and intimidating subject - biochemistry. In particular in the Irish context I dealt with Nursing students who either had done little or no chemistry a school or else had done it so long ago that it was long forgotten. My book recognises this problem and incorporates essential basic chemistry introduced a little at a time as required.

I have been increasingly aware of the need for interdisciplinarity in scientific research and to that end initiated both the Krebs Institute at Sheffield and the Conway Institute at University College Dublin, bringing together scientists with different skills. Another interest has been the promotion of public understanding of science and I started a programme at UCD which gets all our Ph. D. students to think and learn about how to explain themselves to a lay audience. Along with this there is a poster competition and the best posters go on the local trains and stations.

Features
  • Easy to digest: ‘Bite sized’ topics lead students through essential biochemistry without going into intimidating detail. 
  • Doesn’t assume prior knowledge: Focuses on key concepts and provides all the basic chemistry students might need. 
  • Colour coded: Specially designed so students can see, at a glance, which chapters focus on underpinning chemistry, which on basic biochemistry and which on clinical applications. 
  • Clinically relevant: Topical examples throughout the text show how getting to grips with biochemistry will help students succeed in healthcare practice. 
  • Reinforces learning: Includes numerous self-test questions with answers throughout. 
  • Companion website includes:
    • A complete set of figures from within the book.
    • Extended MCQs with answers and further explanation where relevant .