About Hans Bogen’s “Modern Biology” (now in English)
August 2021
Alex Sobko, PhD
About Hans Bogen’s “Modern Biology”.
The magnificent book by Hans Bogen “Modern Biology” (German original edition — 1967, Russian translation — 1970) — delivered to our home from Moscow — many thanks to Georgy Leontiev for finding this rarity for me and organizing the delivery — a wonderful gift — well, let’s say, for the next birthday, which is just around the corner!
This is the book of my childhood, that was on a shelf at our home in Moscow (this, of course, is my father’s (Gregory Sobko, PhD) merit; he followed the progress in genetics and biology and passed this interest to me). From this book, I once learned for the first time how enzymes are assembled and regulated, what they consist of, what is the “genetic code”, “the central dogma of biology” (protein synthesis through transcription and translation), what are mitochondria, ribosomes and other organelles, and much more … I remember, being high-school student (10th grade) in biology lesson I described (based on this book) how the reading of triplets of messenger RNA by T-RNA synthetase works, what ribosomes are made of and how they scan RNA — I learned all this from this book. It also describes the concept of regulation of bacterial genes — the “concept of Operon” by Jacob and Monod, which at the end of the 60s, when the book was first published, was at the peak of its success and fame. It is intriguing that the book includes numerous unique photographs of electron microscopy, which are more than 50 years old and these images have hardly lost their relevance today — cell biologists can appreciate it! Of course, the main “tzimmes” for a biologist like me is an attempt to understand what has changed in modern biology over the past 50 years — which concepts and paradigms have stood the test of time and are still relevant today, and what really new has been achieved over the past 50 years. It would be interesting to discuss this with professional biologists and with everyone who is interested in how life works at the molecular and cellular levels. Will take its decent place on my bookshelf today!
