• Part One: Learning from Life's Big Instruction Book
  1. Introduction
  2. Everything I needed to know, I learned from... (Genes and their necessity)
  3. Reading the Book (How genes are acted on: regulation)
  4. Getting Organized (Cells)
  5. Workers, Tools, and Materials (Proteins and their functions)
  6. Working on the Assembly Line (Pathways)
  7. Seeing the Unseen (The relationship of genes to traits)
  8. Book Binding (DNA and its properties)
  9. The Anatomy of a Worker (Protein form and function)
  10. Making Workers (How genes are acted on: expression)
  11. Seeing the Unseen -- Double Vision (Genes and traits in eukaryotes)
• Part Two: Copying the Book
  12. Styles of Copying the Book (Introduction to reproduction)
  13. Multiplying by Dividing (Asexual reproduction and point mutation)
  14. Birds and Bees (Sexual reproduction and genetic recombination)
  15. Sharing Chapters (Bacterial conjugation)
  16. Smudging the Book (Other agents of genetic change)
  17. Is Change Good? (Effects of mutations)
• Part Three: Improving the Book
  18. Better Books by Trial and Error (Evolution)
  19. Survival of the Fittest (Natural Selection)
  20. Choosing the Fittest (Artificial Selection)
  21. Designing the Fittest (Genetic Engineering)
  22. Instruction Books at Your Fingertips (Conclusion)
• Appendices
  1. Overview of Part One
  2. Overview of Part Two
  3. Overview of Part Three
  4. Al's Home Page (Alcohol Dehydrogenase I and relatives)
  5. A Gallery of Workers
  6. Bibliography and links

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Life's Big Instruction Book

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