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Hidden in a nondescript red-brick building
in Rockville, Maryland, is the most unusual warehouse in
the world, a bank of living cells called the American Type
Culture Collection. Here, at 321 degrees below zero -- a
temperature at which life abandons its vital dance and enters
limbo, but without dying -- are some 30,000 vials holding
60 billion living forms in suspended animation, including
mouse kidney cells, turkey blood cells, armadillo spleen
cells, and some 40 billion human cells. These cultured cells
are essential to modern biological research -- in fact,
cells today are the most intimately studied life forms in
all of science, for both practical and philosophical reasons.
For one, all disease -- from cancer and the common cold,
to arthritis and AIDS -- stems from cells gone awry. And
cell research not only promises a cure for a wide variety
of disease -- it also holds the key to the mystery of life
itself.
In Life Itself, Boyce Rensberger,
science writer for The Washington Post, takes readers
to the frontlines of cell research with some of the brightest
investigators in molecular, cellular, and developmental
biology. Virtually all the hottest topics in biomedical
research are covered here, such as how do cells and their
minute components move? How do the body's cells heal wounds?
What is cancer? Why do cells die? And what is the nature
of life? Readers discover that -- contrary to what we may
have concluded from pictures in our high school textbooks
-- cells teem with activity and that, inside, they "are
more crowded with components than the inside of a computer."
We learn that scientists now know of at least ten molecular
motors that move things about inside the cell -- in most
cells, this motion is short because the cell is tiny, but
in the single-celled nerve fibers that run from the base
of the spinal chord to the toes (measuring three or four
feet in an adult human), transported molecules can take
several days to make the trip. Rensberger describes the
many fascinating kinds of cells found in the body, from
"neural crest cells" (early in embryonic development,
these cells crawl all over the embryo to the sites where
they will pursue their fate -- as nerve cells, or cartilage,
or skin), to "dust cells" (nomadic cells in the
lung that swallow and store indigestible particles, then
migrate to the gullet where they themselves are swallowed
and digested), to "natural killer cells" (millions
of which roam the body looking for cancerous cells). We
meet many of the scientists who have pioneered cell research,
such as Rita Levi-Montalcini -- an Italian who, shut out
of her lab during World War II, continued to experiment
in her bedroom at home, making the discovery ("nerve
growth factor") for which she won the Nobel Prize --
and American Leonard Hayflick, who discovered that all human
cells (except cancer cells) invariably die after about fifty
divisions. Rensberger also provides an illuminating discussion
of AIDS -- revealing exactly why this virus is so difficult
to defeat -- and of cancer, explaining that before cancer
can start, a whole series of rare events must occur, events
so unlikely that it seems a wonder that anyone gets cancer
at all.
The solutions to the most pressing challenges
facing scientists today -- from the efforts to conquer disease
to the quest to understand life itself -- will be found
in the innermost workings of the cell. In Life Itself,
Boyce Rensberger paints a colorful and fascinating portrait
of modern research in this vital area, an account which
will enthrall anyone interested in state-of-the-art science
or the incredible workings of the human body.
Boyce Rensberger is Science Writer for
The Washington Post, and creator of The Post's acclaimed
educational supplement, "Horizon: The Learning Section."
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