What you actually have to buy
Nothing, book-wise. The two required items are a calculator — smartphones, iPads and other multi-function devices are "not recommended in lab and are not allowed during quizzes" — and a lab notebook or binder. Sort the calculator before week 1; the pipette-exercise assignment is a calculation task, and Concept Quizzes run under Respondus LockDown Browser, so a phone will not save you.
The four optional titles, and when each earns its keep
Culture of Animal Cells: A Manual of Basic Technique and Specialized Applications — 6th ed.
→ THE ONE TO ACTUALLY OPEN
Freshney is the standard bench reference for exactly what this course does: aseptic technique, passaging, counting, cryopreservation, contamination troubleshooting. When a lab step goes wrong — cells not attaching, a count that makes no sense, suspected mycoplasma — this is where the answer is. It also covers cytotoxicity and viability assays, which is your project.
At the Bench: A Laboratory Navigator — updated edition
→ HOW A LAB WORKS, NOT WHAT A CELL DOES
Practical lab literacy — keeping a notebook that survives scrutiny, planning experiments, working in a group, presenting results. Directly useful for the parts of this course that are graded on process: daily activity completion, group participation, and the written results sections.
Molecular Biology Made Simple and Fun — 4th ed.
→ WHEN A CONCEPT WON'T CLICK
Short, plain-language explanations. Reach for it when a lecture concept — or a technique in a paper — needs a gentler first pass before you go to a full textbook.
The Cell: A Molecular Approach — 8th ed.
→ THE CONVENTIONAL TEXTBOOK, IF YOU WANT ONE
A standard cell-biology text covering the five concept areas objective 1 names — adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, signaling, gene expression. Functionally interchangeable with the Lodish reader already on this site; use whichever you find first.
Already on this site
Lodish — Molecular Cell Biology, 9th edition REFERENCE · not assigned
Readable in full under Reference. It is not a course text — no chapters are assigned and no quiz draws on it. It plays the same role Cooper & Hausman would: background when a lecture concept or a paper's introduction assumes knowledge you do not have yet. Use it by search, not by reading it through.
Primary literature — the reading that is actually graded
Paper Quizzes are 60 points, and the papers are posted in Canvas two weeks before each quiz — up to five at a time. The quizzes are open-note and timed, so the notes you take while reading are the exam technique. Grad students additionally write 12 one-page critiques.
Reading a methods paper under time pressure
- Figures first. In a cell-biology paper the argument lives in the figures; the text narrates them. Work out what each panel measures and what the control is before reading the prose.
- Note the cell line and the assay. Quiz questions in a course built on alamarBlue, Trypan blue and qPCR will keep returning to how a result was measured and what that measurement cannot show.
- Write the one-sentence claim per figure as you go. That note file is what you will actually use during the open-note quiz — a highlighted PDF is not searchable under time pressure.
- Come to the discussion. It is ungraded and optional, which is exactly why it is cheap preparation for a graded quiz on the same paper.
- PubMed — for the critiques and for chasing a paper's references
- PMC — free full text
- Google Scholar — "cited by" is the fastest way to find follow-up work for a critique's "future experiments" section
- Criss Library — institutional access when a paper is paywalled
Technique references for the lab
- Alberts Molecular Biology of the Cell 4e — free on NCBI Bookshelf
- Gibco Cell Culture Basics — aseptic technique and passaging, with video
- Bio-Rad qPCR guide — for weeks 12–13 and the project's expression work
- Open-access journals — a source of candidate compounds for the cytotoxicity project