Asking About Life

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This exciting first-edition text is appropriate for the one- or two-semester non-majors or mixed majors/non-majors course. Tobin and Dusheck's Asking About Life has a unique approach to biology that emphasizes questions, experimentation, and principles of biology. Features: * Each chapter starts with an engaging story about science, the questions that motivate the research, and how each scientist overcame obstacles in making a discovery. Stories that feature Rosalind Franklin and Kary Mullis, among others, humanise biologists and biology. * Asking About Life encourages students to be curious and critical about science and life. Using an inquiry approach, Tobin and Dusheck present headings and subheadings as questions in the belief that the core of good science is found not in the answers , but in the questions. * The pedagogy emphasises experimentation. Students who grasp the experimental underpinning of current concepts are in a better position to assimilate new information as it emerges, whether in other classes or in the news. * Asking about Life emphasises the interrelations of ideas and discoveries, as well as the social context which makes the material more understandable to the student. * The use of metaphors, especially the striking visual metaphors in the illustrated program, will increase the comprehension of abstract ideas and allow the student to put a concept in a context that they can understand.

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Allan J. Tobin is Director of the UCLA Brain Research Institute. He holds the Eleanor Leslie Chair in Neuroscience at UCLA, where he is both Professor of Neurology and Professor of Physiological Science. Tobin is also Scientific Director of the Hereditary Disease Foundation (HDF), where he helped organize the consortium that identified the gene responsible for Huntington's disease. Both at UCLA and at HDF, he has encouraged the application of cell biology and molecular genetics to disorders of the brain. Tobin's undergraduate degree is in literature and biology (MIT, 1963), and his doctoral degree is in biophysics, with an emphasis on physical biochemistry (Harvard, 1969). Tobin did postdoctoral work on cell surface molecules at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, and on red blood cell development at MIT. At UCLA, he has an active research laboratory that studies the production and action of GABA, the major inhibitory signal in the brain. These studies may eventually lead to new therapeutic approaches to epilepsy, Huntington's disease, and juvenile diabetes. Tobin is the recipient of a Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. For more than 25 years, Tobin has taught introductory courses in cell biology, molecular biology, developmental biology, and neuroscience. He is the recipient of a Faculty Teaching and Service Award and is regarded as an excellent and highly interactive teacher.