Field of medicine: Medical genetics.

Audience: Medical students, house officers, and physicians.

Purpose: To introduce the principles of medical molecular genetics and their applications to clinical medicine.

Content: This book presents the basic concepts of molecular genetics and some clinical applications in a format suitable for use as a textbook, a course supplement, or a review for medical board examinations. The first chapter provides a history of genetics from Mendel to the Human Genome Project. Nine chapters cover the structure and function of nucleic acids, mutagenesis, and phenotypic expression, and 10 subsequent chapters discuss population genetics. These principles are applied to clinical medicine in the last three chapters, which deal with monogenic inherited disorders, syndromes and dysmorphology, and clinical aspects of medical genetics. The final chapter summarizes the status of gene therapy, the use of animal models for human diseases, and the Human Genome Project.

Highlights: Each chapter integrates one or more clinical cases into the text, posing them at the beginning and discussing them again in a section at the end, using the concepts and methods presented in the chapter. Margin notes provide definitions of terms and highlight important concepts and clinical correlations. The questions at the end of each chapter are presented in the format used by the National Board of Medical Examiners and are followed by answers and short explanations. The text in each chapter is supplemented by numerous useful figures, tables, and photographs.

Limitations: The value of the figures is limited by lack of color and the darkness of some of the photographs.

Context: Several books on human molecular genetics have appeared in recent years. Human Genetics: A Problem Based Approach, by Korf (Blackwell Science, 1996), is similar to Medical Molecular Genetics and covers much of the same material. Human Molecular Genetics, by Strachan and Read (John Wiley & Sons, 1997) is a larger and more comprehensive text with some clinical applications and serves best as a text or reference book.

Reviewer: Michael R. Cummings, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois.