Book review: The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology

After getting the Manga Guides to Statistics and Databases, I recently bought the Manga Guide to Molecular Biology. All of these guides are very basic, so if you already know a substantial amount you won't learn anything new, but I think they can be useful for teachers and for raw beginners.

The molecular biology guide does a good job explaining the classic, core ideas: DNA replication, transcription, translation, and some of the biochemical structures. To give an idea of the level of detail, Okazaki fragments, the structure of transfer RNA, and introns and exons are included, but not poly-adenylation. Some topics, like micro-RNA, are briefly described in sections that are in a more traditional textbook style.

Perhaps the best use of this book is as a gift to someone to encourage an interest in molecular biology - for example, a high school student relative.