Biochemistry
Biochemistry is all about learning cellular level processes and using this to understand “normal” function, disease and developing therapies based on these fundamental principles. It can be split into 2 broad categories: metabolism and genomics. This can be one of the most daunting subjects due to the complexity and sheer volume of content. Hopefully, these resources can help you. Click on the links to directed to each resource!
Main Textbook
Principles of Biochemistry' by Voet, Voet and Pratt is a very detailed textbook that covers pretty much most of the biochemistry topics you’ll need. Whilst it’s a good one-stop place, the detail does put off a lot of people. I recommend using this more as a reference for specific topics or concepts, rather than trying to read it back to front.
Metabolism
Metabolism covers topics mostly to do with cellular function like processes to power the cell (glycolysis, Krebs cycle etc.), protein synthesis and cellular signalling (communication between cells). There are several textbooks that are handy for learning metabolism.
Essential Cell Biology, 5th ed (Alberts, et al., 2019), Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts (Garland copyright), The Cell: A Molecular Approach, 8th ed (Cooper, GM & Hausman, RE, 2018), Cell Signaling, Principles and Mechanisms. Lim, W, Layer, B & Pawson, T (2014) are all good solid books. Most of these books are far too detailed than necessary so again, probably good to clear up things not explained well in lectures, rather than front to back reading.
Essential Cell Biology by Alberts is probably the best of the lot, with clear diagrams and easily followable text explanations, so if you’re looking to just buy/borrow one of these, definitely go for this. For video lovers, Osmosis does the job very well for big picture ideas.
Genomics
Genomics is all things DNA from replication and translation to aberrant function causing disease such as cancer. Personally, I found this section to be the most interesting and the closest to clinical practice, as we got to learn about genetic disease and cancers in a lot of detail. In terms of good books, I recommend Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry 6th edition by Nelson & Cox (Chapters 8, 9 and 24, 25), Essential Cell Biology by Alberts et al, Principles of Biochemistry by Voet, Voet and Pratt and Strachan T, Goodship J, Chinnery P Genetics and Genomics in Medicine, 2014.
The bottom line is, lecture handouts are often enough. However, some topics require further reading for understanding or maybe just interest. If you just want 1 or 2 books only out of this lot, the books to get or borrow from the library are: Principles of Biochemistry' by Voet, Voet and Pratt and Essential Cell Biology by Alberts.
