Two books that I highly recommend to give you a visual and numbers view of the cell:

“The Machinery of Life” by David Goodsell is full of illustrations like the ones show in the article and really gave me a sense of what k might imagine when reading about the cell.

“Cell Biology by the Numbers” by Ron Milo and Rob Philips is full of order of magnitude calculations of about the processes of the cell. How fast are they, over what distance, how much, etc.

If you liked David Goodsell’s illustration you can find more of his work at https://ccsb.scripps.edu/goodsell/. I’m a huge fan.

> For many years, I had an intense aversion to mathematics. Biology was my refuge because it was simple: Read the textbook, memorize the facts, and ace the exam. (The only reason I majored in biochemistry as a college student was because it didn't have a multivariable calculus requirement.)

Every part of this passage is a shockingly accurate description of myself. I felt that I was bad at math and did a biochem degree because it meant I could skip Cal III. Now, I'm a computational biologist and I've mostly made up with math.

Lets hear it for Van der Waals forces! Go team!

The painting is wonderful. Yes, it's a snapshot in time of a dynamic state. All paintings are!

Life is amazing. Can anyone recommend good modern starting points to someone who would want to learn more about how living beings work (from bottom up)? It has been a while since I actively delved into Biology (my school days).

• morphle

  today at 7:35 AM

  The research into the origen of life looks at bottom up fundamentals (how they work) of all cells since the solar system was formed. You could start with the slides in this lecture and read the underlying papers and all the references in all those papers. You probably can find these references also in all the books he wrote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBiIDwBOqQA

  Maybe an educational text for the laymen has summarised this recently but I'm not aware of one. Most Biology from your school days have been rewritten.

  I will have to re-read Molecular Biology of the Cell, 7th Edition, 2022. I read the 3th edition and it has changed dramatically since.

  You can download it on Anna's Archive or order it at the usual suspects https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Molecular+Biology+of+the+Cell%2C+...

• Milpotel

  today at 7:25 AM

  I can recommend "The song of the cell" as a starting point. If you prefer textbooks, maybe "Life: The Science of Biology". I have a translated non-english copy and besides some math issues it's a nice overview, but I'm not a biologist.

  • piva00

    today at 10:26 AM

    I second "The Song of the Cell" as a good read, as a layman I can't judge the factuality of it but as a reader it was a very enjoyable journey.

What a beautiful depiction. Reminds me of high fidelity 3D animation videos I used to watch about DNA replication, cell signalling etc.

One of the most fascinating parts to me was DNA transcription. The engineering is quite precise.

Found the video I was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hk9jct2ozY

• ofrzeta

  today at 4:17 AM

  Looks fascinating. Related: The Machinery of Life https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-0-387-84925-6 (actually it is the book of the person who drew the first illustration in the article but I could not see any mention of the book).

  • bhagyeshsp

    today at 4:48 AM

    Wow, aptly named "The Machinery of Life".

• gavmor

  today at 6:20 AM

  Ugh, makes my skin crawl, it's so chaotic! And delicate-looking!

biology is a monad?

> It's a wonder that cells get anything done at all.

> The first time I did these calculations, I felt an intense appreciation for biology. And now, I want everyone else to feel the same. We ought to teach students of biology to think as mathematicians: to carefully quantify biology, to think in absolute units, and to develop a feeling for the organism.

It was interesting to read this article, but I think I would’ve understood a lot more if this entire piece had been (or were) an animated video that described it. Text and a few animations don’t do enough justice for the passion, knowledge and detail that’s in this article, IMO.

Logically that the burrito metaphor can explain monads, implies that the burrito metaphor can explain biology.

Lets hear it for Van der Waals forces! Go team!

> A typical E. coli cell, after all, measures about one micrometer across.

Bit nitpicky here but ... he wrote a typical E. coli cell.

Naturally bacteria have different size ranges, depending on many factors - nutrients, temperature, genome and so forth; e. g. look at how huge Thiomargarita namibiensis is.

But the 1 µm as average here given for E. coli, is not correct:

https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?id=117344&...

Length 1.78±0.54 μm

So while +/- at the lower end may be 1.24 µm, the max range here would be 2.42 µm, which is what I had more in mind (e. g. roughly about 2µm). I don't have all of the data to be able to say which is the exact value, but I think the website at bionumbers.hms.harvard.ed is more realistic, so I would say that E. coli's best average is more at 2µm than 1µm.