Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, 7th Edition

by David L. Nelson, Michael M. Cox
January 2017

Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry is the #1 bestseller for the introductory biochemistry course because it brings clarity and coherence to an often unwieldy discipline, offering a thoroughly updated survey of biochemistry’s enduring principles, definitive discoveries, and groundbreaking new advances with each edition.

This new Seventh Edition maintains the qualities that have distinguished the text since Albert Lehninger’s original edition—clear writing, careful explanations of difficult concepts, helpful problem-solving support, and insightful communication of contemporary biochemistry’s core ideas, new techniques, and pivotal discoveries. Again, David Nelson and Michael Cox introduce students to an extraordinary amount of exciting new findings without an overwhelming amount of extra discussion or detail. And with this edition, W.H. Freeman and Sapling Learning have teamed up to provide the book’s richest, most completely integrated text/media learning experience yet, through an extraordinary new online resource: SaplingPlus.

Students taking biochemistry for the first time often have difficulty with two key aspects of the course: approaching quantitative problems and applying what they learned in organic chemistry. Central to this book’s popularity are the effective ways it helps students overcome these difficulties:
Focus on Chemical Logic

• Section 13.2, Chemical Logic and Common Biochemical Reactions, discusses the common biochemical reaction types that underlie all metabolic reactions, helping students to connect organic chemistry with biochemistry.
• Chemical logic figures for each of the central metabolic pathways highlight the conservation of mechanism and illustrate patterns that make learning pathways easier.
• Mechanism figures help students understand the reaction process step by step, explaining a consistent set of conventions for each mechanism.

Clear Art

• Smarter renditions of classic figures are easier to interpret.
• Molecular structures created specifically for this book use consistent shapes and color schemes.
• Figures with numbered, annotated steps help explain complex processes.
• Summary figures help students keep the big picture in mind while learning the specifics.

Problem-Solving Tools

• In-text Worked Examples take students through particular difficult equations to improve their quantitative problem-solving skills.
• More than 600 end-of-chapter problems give students further opportunity to practice what they have learned.
• Data Analysis Problems (one at the end of each chapter), contributed by Brian White of the University of Massachusetts–Boston, encourage students to synthesize what they have learned and apply their knowledge to the interpretation of data from the literature.

Key Conventions
For review and easy reference throughout, Principles of Biochemistry highlights important assumptions and ideas that students are expected to assimilate without being told (for example, peptide sequences are written from amino- to carboxyl-terminal end, left to right; nucleotide sequences are written from 5´ to 3´ end, left to right).