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What is life? Fifty years after physicist Erwin Schrodinger
posed this question in his celebrated and inspiring book, the answer remains elusive.
In The Way of the Cell, one of the world's most respected microbiologists
draws on his wide knowledge of contemporary science to provide fresh insight into
this intriguing and all-important question.
What is the relationship of living things
to the inanimate realm of chemistry and physics? How do
lifeless but special chemicals come together to form those
intricate dynamic ensembles that we recognize as life? To
shed light on these questions, Franklin Harold focuses here
on microorganisms -- in particular, the supremely well-researched
bacterium E. coli -- because the cell is the simplest
level of organization that manifests all the features of
the phenomenon of life. Harold shows that as simple as they
appear when compared to ourselves, every cell displays a
dynamic pattern in space and time, orders of magnitude richer
than its elements. It integrates the writhings and couplings
of billions of molecules into a coherent whole, draws matter
and energy into itself, constructs and reproduces its own
order and persists in this manner for numberless generations
while continuously adapting to a changing world.
A cell constitutes a unitary whole, a unit of
life, and in this volume one of the leading authorities on the cell gives us a
vivid picture of what goes on within this minute precinct. The result is a richly
detailed, meticulously crafted account of what modern science can tell us about
life as well as one scientist's personal attempt to wring understanding from the
tide of knowledge. Franklin M. Harold is Emeritus
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Colorado State University. |
