The Machinery of Life is a simply written and intelligently illustrated gem about the inner workings of living cells. It is an excellent introduction to the subject of molecular biology as well as a valuable reference book. David Goodsell masterfully packs 90% of what you would want to remember about molecular biology into a small book which is far easier to read than a typical biology textbook. I gave a copy of The Machinery of Life to my 13-year old granddaughter.
David Goodsell excels at establishing and maintaining perspective and connections to everyday life. For example, he establishes a visceral sense of relative sizes with an analogy: If a typical human cell in a finger were the size of a grain of rice, then the last joint of that finger would be the size of a large room. The number of cells in that joint is roughly the number of grains of rice it takes to fill a room. That ratio represents a 1000x magnification. Another 1000x magnification (i.e. 1,000,000x) reaches the world of the molecules that make up cells, where organic molecules are the grains of rice, and the cells are rooms filled with them. Once he has you in the room-sized cell, he explains how gravity becomes negligible and thermal motion becomes critically important. Then he illustrates and describes the molecular machines which make life possible, including those which: read DNA to make RNA, make proteins from RNA instructions, and make ATP (the currency of energy).
Topics include: molecular machines, the processes of living, human cells and the advantages of compartments, specialized human cells (including muscle, blood and nerves), life and death, aging, viruses and vaccines. His descriptions of the different strategies that flu viruses, polio viruses and HIV viruses use to invade and debilitate human cells to reproduce themselves, were worth the price of the book for me.
The cover art is an intriguing cutaway view of an Escherichia coli cell at ten-thousand-times magnification. These common bacteria, found in every human gut, help to digest our food and to resist pathogens. Occasionally they make us sick when they acquire toxic genes from pathogens or enter areas of the body they shouldn’t. This bacterium has been central to biochemistry since its discovery in 1885 and is currently the most studied cell known to science. David Goodsell describes in detail what this cell is made of, how it grows, moves about, reproduces and defends itself from other microbes and from the human immune system. He accomplishes all this in a mere 15 pages which include 7 detailed illustrations of cellular regions at 1-7 million-time magnifications.
The 2nd Edition of this book was published in 2010 by Springer Science + Business Media. (Copernicus books in the USA)
