Biochemistry is a dynamic, rapidly growing field, and the goal of this color atlas is to illustrate this fact visually. The precise boundaries between biochemistry and related fields, such as cell biology, anatomy, physiology, genetics, and pharmacology, are difficult to define and, in many cases, arbitrary. This overlap is not coincidental. The object being studied is often the same—a nerve cell or a mitochondrion, for example and only the point of view differs. For a considerable period of its history, biochemistry was strongly influenced by chemistry and concentrated on investigating metabolic conversions and energy transfers. Explaining the composition, structure, and metabolism of biologically important molecules has always been in the foreground. However, new aspects inherited from biochemistry’s other parent, the biological sciences, are now increasingly being added: the relationship between chemical structure and biological function, the pathways of information transfer, observance of the ways in which biomolecules are spatially and temporally distributed in cells and organisms, and an awareness of evolution as a biochemical process.
These new aspects of biochemistry are bound to become more and more important. Owing to space limitations, we have concentrated here on the biochemistry of humans and mammals, although the biochemistry of other animals, plants, and microorganisms is no less interesting. In selecting the material for this book, we have put the emphasis on subjects relevant to students of human medicine. The main purpose of the atlas is to serve as an overview and to provide visual information quickly and efficiently. Referring to textbooks can easily fill any gaps. For readers encountering biochemistry for the first time, some of the plates may look rather complex. It must be emphasized, therefore, that the atlas is not intended as a substitute for a comprehensive textbook of biochemistry.
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