Salem Press

	An excellent starting point for basic information about genetics, particularly those aspects commonly reported in the news, this is recommended for all libraries.
Library Journal

	Recommended.
References for Students Gale Group

	The Salem set provides clear explanations and is recommended for college and high-school libraries as well as any public library that has a large science collection.
Booklist

	Recommended. General readers; undergraduates.
Choice

	...covering an immense range of subjects in sufficient detail to engage serious students, this set will not only make a significant addition to deeper collections, but contains enough new material to justify replacing its predecessor.
School Library Journal

Encyclopedia of Genetics, Rev. Ed.
Publisher's Note

The award-winning Encyclopedia of Genetics was originally created in 1999 to provide the general reader with a thorough yet accessible overview of one of modern science's most vital and intriguing fields. This 2004 Revised Edition adds 64 new overview essays on current topics to the original entries, reflecting the rapid developments in an exciting and often controversial branch of science that is increasingly shaping our world.

Of the 172 original entries (168 overviews plus 4 appendices), 7 overviews ("Biotechnology," "Genetic Medicine," "Immune Deficiency Disorders," "Lethal Alleles," "Meiosis," "Methane-Producing Bacteria," and "Sheep Cloning") have been dropped because they have been superseded by other, updated or new, essays; 26 have been replaced because they were so out of date as to demand completely new coverage (two of these, "Aging" and "Mitosis and Meiosis," are from other Salem publications, deemed more up to date than the original entries); and 131 were moderately to heavily revised and updated by the editor as deemed appropriate.

All essays' bibliographies are new or fully updated. The four appendices have been updated and two new ones, "Web Sites" and "Nobel Prizes for Discoveries in Genetics," have been added. Featured in this new edition are 25 new "sidebars," or mini-essays (500 words each). These sidebars, appearing in shaded boxes, offer coverage of particularly significant and current subtopics appended to the overview essays.

The result, in two volumes, is 223 overviews, 25 sidebars, and 6 appendices: a 30 percent increase based on number of overview essays, and an increase of more than 40 percent in overall word length. The set surveys this continually evolving discipline from a variety of perspectives, offering historical and technical background along with a balanced discussion of recent discoveries and developments. Basics of biology--from the molecular and cellular levels through the organismal level, from Mendelian principles to the latest on DNA sequencing technology--constitute the core coverage. Medical topics comprise a significant number of essays, as the genetic predisposition for many illnesses and syndromes has increasingly come to light. Genetic technologies that promise a world without hunger, disease, and disability--and promise to rewrite human values--are addressed as well. The encyclopedia's scope embraces the key social and ethical questions raised by these new genetic frontiers: from cloning to stem cells to genetically modified foods and organisms.

Each essay follows a standard format, including ready-reference top matter and the following standard features:

Fields of study lists one or more of a dozen subdisciplines of genetics or biology under which the topic falls.

Significance provides a definition and summary of the topic's importance.

Key terms, concepts central to the topic, are next identified and defined.

Subheads break the main body of each essay into clearly marked subtopics.

The contributor's byline lists the biologist or other area expert who wrote the essay.

See also section lists cross-references to other essays of interest.

Further Reading lists sources for further study with annotations; all of these biographical sections have been fully updated and reformatted to include the latest relevant works and full citation data for easy library access.

Web Sites of Interest, finally, includes annotated entries for the most authoritative free sites on the Internet, including the sponsoring organization and URL. This section, which appears in more than half the essays, was included for topics (such as diseases and syndromes) for which authoritative government agencies, professional or academic societies, or support organizations were available, with only the occasional nod to a particularly useful personal URL. All sites were accessed by the editors in August, 2003.

A series of appendices supplements the overview essays: An updated Time Line of Major Developments in Genetics offers a chronological overview of the field's development. Nobel Prizes for Discoveries in Genetics lists Nobel Prize winners (all prizes) whose contributions altered the history of genetics. An updated Biographical Dictionary of Important Geneticists has more than doubled in size, now including all Nobel laureates whose discoveries in genetics garnered them the award, as well as numerous others. The updated Glossary provides definitions of more than 500 commonly used terms and important concepts. The updated general Bibliography references important works in each field of study, joining with individual articles' "Further Reading" sections to offer plentiful citations to recently published sources for additional research. The importance of the Internet to bioinformatics and to general education in genetics is reflected in the new Web Sites appendix.

The articles in the Encyclopedia of Genetics, Revised Edition are arranged alphabetically by title; an alphabetical list of contents appears at the beginning of each volume. To help readers locate topics of interest by area of study, a Category Index, a Personages Index, and a comprehensive Subject Index are included at the end of volume 2. Nearly 100 diagrams, charts, graphs, drawings, and tables elucidate complex concepts, and more than one hundred photographs illustrate the text.

We wish to thank the many biologists and other scholars who contributed both to the original edition and this revised edition; their names and academic affiliations appear in the Contributor List that follows. Special credit is due the editor of the Revised Edition, Dr. Bryan D. Ness of the Department of Biology, Pacific Union College. Professor Ness paid close attention to the contents of every essay, carefully updating all of the original text, elucidating complex concepts for the general reader, and making valuable contributions to the project on all levels.