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It is pretty hard to be more descriptive and
complimentary of your book than the two excellent reviews (1,2).
I have told many colleagues that BMC is the best book on
protein crystallography since the book by Blundell and Johnson
(1976).
As for the powerpoint slides, these are
valuable for the novice as well as the experienced
crystallographer.
For me it was a pleasure to go through the slides and be
reminded or some aspect that had been placed in one of my dark
recesses. Other
times I found great descriptions of the many complicated methods
that occur in crystallography, especially those related to
probability distributions and maximum likelihood methods in
refinement.
Excellent use of colors to highlight key points are used
thorough out the presentations.
There are fifteen powerpoint slides: one for each of the
13 chapters of the book and two special topics. The two extra
slide sets are on membrane proteins and DNA structures. These
are good supplements for topical project areas of interest.
Each chapter has at least one review slide of
what has been learned and each chapter concludes with a summary
of the key concepts that have been presented.
Obviously these are important in the teaching
environment. I
always make handouts of these slides.
My favorite presentations are on crystal geometry and
validation. These
two chapters are exceptional.
Validation is rarely covered in textbooks and the
geometry uses actual molecules to make the points about symmetry
which makes the space group presentation much more interesting.
One could go on and on about each chapter, but the
powerpoint presentations make a great complement to the book.
The chapters on solving the phase problem are
excellent in presenting a Patterson solution as an example.
This gives the basis for nearly all
of the other methods for determining the structures,
including MAD and MR.
My only complaint is the slide for the right
hand rule (Chapter 5, slide 24).
While it is correct, it is awkward to orient your right
hand into the orientation of the unit cell diagram.
Bobby Barnett
(1)
Weiss, M.S. (2010) Acta Cryst. D66, 640-641
(2) Blundell,
T. (2010) J. Appl. Cryst. 43, 1-2
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