The Song of the Cell
A history of the cell, and the development of a multiplicity of subsequent cell sciences, biological and medical, with an emphasis on the human.
Stats for nerds
13recommend
19mentions
18people
2022–2026years
68% recommend26% neutral5% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- 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.
- 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.
- "The Emperor of All Maladies" by Siddartha Mukhejee.
He is a medical doctor, researcher .. plus writes great science / medical books. This one won a Pulitzer prize. Check out his other books "The song of the Cell" and "The Gene". The books take some work to read but every page is a treat.
- Context: I've read this and The Vital Question and watched several interviews with Nick Lane, so a lot of his ideas have blended together in my mind. A lot of the detail in this book went over my head, but it was well written enough to overcome my shortcoming in biochemistry. Similar in depth to Siddhartha Mukherjee's Song of the Cell and The Gene.
This book was a fascinating walk through evolutionary history and the way that different organisms handle energy, and how earlier, less efficient metabolic paths were limited but sufficient to bootstrap the much more efficient and flexible Kreb's cycle. I remember the term and the loop diagram from high school biology, but to actually dive into the elegant chemical pathways felt like discovering the rocket equation or the path from radioactivity to atomic bombs. If you're at all interested in Biology or Chemistry, I highly recommend this book.
- I really like The Tangled Tree by Quammen, The Song of The Cell by Mukherjee, and Utopia or Oblivion by Fuller. Just some books that are staring at me from my work desk.
Edit: oh and in big history, Earth Transformed by Frankopan does a great job of being grounded, balanced and accessible.
- What excites me the most is if we are successful with projects like https://www.humanimmunomeproject.org/ and to map our findings to the prior Human Microbiome project - https://www.hmpdacc.org/overview/ which tactful AI applications can likely find more novel findings given majority of our immune system is found in the gut. Serotonin is mostly created there, and dopamine has a strong production presence there as well.
So many great books on this recently: I contain multitudes, Immune, Song of the Cell, etc.
Gut + Immune System = Future cures to many diseases
Related
The Gene
27 recommend · 37
Life, the science of biology
2 recommend · 2
The Emperor of All Maladies
77 recommend · 118
The lives of a cell
6 recommend · 7
Molecular Biology of the Cell
49 recommend · 102
Physical Biology of the Cell
5 recommend · 10
Siddhartha
recommend · 209
