Top products from r/genomics

For which one? CRISPR? Well you won't be able to understand the details until you have a good grasp of molecular biology. But molecular biology itself is a huge area. I would like to give you recommendations but it's really hard with your interests so broad.

It is like asking for book recommendations on Linear Algebra: there are tons and some focus on numerical methods, others on eigenvalues, others on decomposition methods like SVD, others on applications in machine learning, etc.

Maybe start with something like this:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0815344325/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1/187-9306447-5023949?pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_r=0A3FAK9C4CRAFZQTEQ4H&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1977604502&pf_rd_i=0815341059

or this

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Robert-Weaver/dp/0073525324/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479421339&sr=8-2&keywords=Molecular+Biology%3A+Robert+Weaver

for molecular biology.

For introductory genetics, pretty much any undergraduate level biology or biochemistry textbook will help you understand the basics of transcription, translation, genes, heredity, etc. Once you have a thorough understanding of what a gene is, what a regulatory region is, what epigenetics is, what types of mutations occur etc. then you'll have a good idea of which specific questions to ask to explore a certain topic in more detail.

I would also spend time on the wikipedia pages and other sources reading about the different sequencing methods that are central to genetics. Look up Sanger sequencing and explore some of the next-generation-sequencing (NGS) techniques now available. Fully understanding these will also require knowledge of biochemistry, such as phosphodiester bonds, and basic biology techniques and physics such as electrophoresis and fluorescence.

Understanding and diving into CRISPR, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, etc. will require a thorough understanding of the above, and then more detailed knowledge on gene expression, how it is manipulated, about things like plasmids, retroviruses and their molecular machinery, etc.

Then there are people who develop algorithms for bioinformatics that probably know little to none of the above and don't need to for their day to day work; the answer is in general "it depends".

I'm a second-year grad student in genetics/genomics, and these are the resources I go to for those oh-crap-I've-never-had-that-class moments:

This may be more than you want to spend (~$70), but Lynch has a really good book that details many of genomic elements and how they may have evolved. He assumes the reader generally understands transcription/translation, but the book isn't too technical.

If you have access from a company or university, Nature Reviews Genetics has reviews aimed at general scientific audiences for just about anything genetics/genomics related.

And, honestly, most Wikipedia pages for these kinds of topics have pretty reliable information as a first pass.

It may not be a book on strictly genetics but having had an engineer brother and being a bio student when he entered industry me and his company recommended him this book: http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Made-Simple-Fun/dp/1889899046