Biology Talk

meimei · Guest

Eucaryotic cells, in general, are bigger and more elaborate than
procaryotic cells, and their genomes are bigger and more elaborate,
too. The greater size is accompanied by radical differences in cell
structure and function. Moreover, many classes of eucaryotic cells
form multicellular organisms that attain a level of complexity
unmatched by any procaryote.

Because they are so complex, eucaryotes confront molecular biologists
with a special set of challenges, which will concern us in the rest of
this book. Increasingly, biologists meet these challenges through the
analysis and manipulation of the genetic information within cells and
organisms. It is therefore important at the outset to know something
of the special features of the eucaryotic genome. We begin by briefly
reviewing how eucaryotic cells are organized, how this reflects their
way of life, and how their genomes differ from those of procaryotes.
This leads us to an outline of the strategy by which molecular
biologists, by exploiting genetic information, are attempting to
discover how eucaryotic organisms work.