The biological world operates on a multitude of scales - from molecules to cells to tissues to organisms to ecosystems. Throughout all these levels runs a common thread: the communication and onward passage of information - from cell to cell, from organism to organism and, ultimately, from generation to generation. But how does this information - no more than a static repository of data - come alive to govern the processes that constitute life?

The answer lies in the concerted action of molecular components which cooperate through a series of carefully-regulated processes to bring the information in our genome to life. These components and processes lie at the heart of one of the most fascinating subjects to engage the minds of scientists today: molecular biology.

Molecular Biology: Principles of Genome Function offers a fresh, distinctive approach to the teaching of molecular biology. It is an approach that reflects the challenge of teaching a subject that is in many ways unrecognizable from the molecular biology of the 20th century - a discipline in which our understanding has advanced immeasurably, but about which many questions remain to be answered.