The Universal Features of Cells on Earth

organized chemical factories that take in matter from their surroundings and use these raw materials to generate copies of themselves. The living organisms appear extraordinarily diverse. What could be more different than a tiger and a piece of seaweed, or a bacterium and a tree? Yet our ancestors, knowing nothing of cells or DNA, saw that all these things had something in common. They called that something “life,” marveled at it, struggled to define it, and despaired of explaining what it was or how it worked in terms that relate to nonliving matter. The discoveries of the past century have not diminished the marvel—quite the contrary. But they have lifted away the mystery as to the nature of life. We can now see that all living things are made of cells, and that these units of living matter all share the same machinery for their most basic functions. Living things, though infinitely varied when viewed from the outside, are fundamentally similar inside. The whole of biology is a counterpoint between the two themes: astonishing variety in individual particulars; astonishing constancy in fundamental mechanisms. In this first chapter we begin by outlining the universal features common to all life on our planet. We then survey, briefly, the diversity of cells. And we see how, thanks to the common code in which the specifications for all living organisms are written, it is possible to read, measure, and decipher these specifications to achieve a coherent understanding of all the forms of life, from the smallest to the greatest.