For more than 25 years, and through four editions, Stryer's Biochemistry has laid out this beautiful subject in an exceptionally appealing and lucid manner. The engaging writing style and attractive design have made the text a pleasure for our students to read and study throughout our years of teaching. Biochemistry is rapidly progressing from a science performed almost entirely at the laboratory bench to one that may be explored through computers. The recently developed ability to determine entire genomic sequences has provided the data needed to accomplish massive comparisons of derived protein sequences, the results of which may be used to formulate and test
hypotheses about biochemical function. The power of these new methods is explained by the impact of evolution: many molecules and biochemical pathways have been generated by duplicating and modifying existing ones.
Throughout the text, a stylized tree icon is positioned at the start of discussions focused primarily on protein homologies and evolutionary origins.