Biochemistry Manga-style

While looking for a different book at my university library, I stumbled across The Manga Guide to Biochemistry. That’s the serendipity of browsing the library stacks, and I wasn’t expecting to find this in an academic library. That probably says more about my ignorance than about library collection strategies.

Since I’ve been teaching myself biochemistry, I checked out the book from the library. At a slim 250 pages comic-book style, this should be much less of a slog than the two thick biochemistry textbooks in my bookshelf. Certainly, the manga version will not include as much depth or breadth, but does it provide a decent overview with sufficient details?

The back cover tells you what to expect: “Science, Romance, and Robot Cats!” Here’s it’s self-synopsis.

Kumi loves to eat, but she’s worried that her passion for junk food is affecting her health. Determined to unlock the secrets of dieting, she enlists the help of her brainy friend Nemoto and his beautiful biochemistry professor, Dr. Kurosaka. And so the adventure begins… As Kumi explores the mysteries of her body’s inner workings. With the help of RoboCat, the professor’s friendly endoscopic robot, you’ll soar through the incredible machinery that keeps us alive and get an up-close look at biopolymers like DNA and proteins, the metabolic processes that turn our food into energy, and the enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions. As you dive into the depths of plant and animal cells, you’ll learn about:

·      The metabolism of substances like carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and alcohol

·      How the energy powerhouses known as mitochondria produce ATP

·      DNA transcription and the different types of RNA that work together to translate the genetic code into proteins

·      How enzyme kinetics are measured and how inhibition works

First of all, the manga is a breeze to read. And it does come chock full of details. Not to the depth of the biochemistry textbook, but certainly more fun to read. I suspect it would even beat a standard dry CliffNotes both in presentation. I think it provides a good overview of the main processes, and it has excellent diagrams. The explanations are clear. There’s also the sense of “this looks hard at first, but we’ll help you along the way and make things clearer”. While it mainly focuses on the basics, it also covers some applications. Two non-diet related examples include the ABO blood typing system and why mochi rice cakes have a springy texture.

It does not skimp on chemical structures, and you do get into the weeds of metabolic cycles. Here’s one example of Coenzyme A. I apologize in advance my poor photo-taking abilities. My hands shake and the lighting’s not great.

And when something complex is being presented, at first Kumi freaks out, but then she is helped along and comes to a better understanding. Here’s her initial encounter with the Krebs cycle. Yes, they do dive into all those details.

Here’s the beginning of a clear walkthrough of photosynthesis. They really do a good job walking the reader through the diagrams and highlighting the key aspects.

Last, but not least, they also go through equations, algebra and graphing. Here’s Kumi being very apprehensive in a section titled “Using Graphs to Understand Enzymes”. They do a thorough introduction of Michaelis-Menten kinetics and Lineweaver-Burk plots. Besides crunching the math, they also explain conceptually what they are doing and why. For example, why would you take reciprocals to construct the Lineweaver-Burk plot? Or how does understanding the plot help you distinguish competitive versus non-competitive inhibition? And what do those constants Km and Vmax mean anyway?

There’s even a tiny section on different types of RNA including ribozymes and self-splicing introns. I spent a chunk of time my previous sabbatical in a ribozyme lab studying the origin-of-life. I’m a theorist so I didn’t do any experiments, but I read a lot!

Overall, I really enjoyed reading The Manga Guide to Biochemistry. I would personally recommend students reading it before a college-level biochemistry course (rather than after) because it gives you an excellent overview overall. I certainly learned a few things that I didn't already know (although much of it was familiar). And it goes into details you would expect to see in standard post-O-Chem Biochem-1. It’s certainly much higher level than a GOB (General-Organic-Biochemistry) non-majors level course. Having an overview before taking a class is very helpful, in my opinion, and the manga guide makes the subject less scary than it might seem.

While I think it’s fun and quick to read, it’s possible I’m biased because I already know a fair bit of chemistry, and I personally think biochemistry is very interesting. I’d be interested to know what students think. Maybe I’ll recommend it to one of my advisees who’s about to take Biochem-1, after I return it to the library.

What should I read next? The series has one on Linear Algebra. That might be useful for students before my Quantum class. Too bad my university library doesn’t have it. In fact, the only one they have in the series is the one on Biochemistry. I wonder why.