👋 Welcome to r/LifeisWhat!

Yes, welcome to this slowly budding community, r/LifeisWhat.  As the moderator of this community, I intend to focus on Paul Nurse's book, “What is Life? Five Great Ideas in Biology.” Please join us if you are interested in exploring this incredible book.

Nurse's goal in writing this book is to provide readers with a new view of life, a view that is not based on new theories but rather on how life actually works. It is an amazing story!

He does this by introducing readers to the "atom of life," the cell. Cells are "the smallest entities that have the core characteristics of life." Those core characteristics are: "They grow, they reproduce, they maintain themselves, and in doing all of this they display a sense of purpose: an imperative to stay alive and to reproduce, come what may." [Emphasis Added]

Amazingly, this book concentrates on a nucleated cell, i.e., a cell that has a nucleus. (All plants and animals we can see on this earth and its seas--and many we cannot see--comprise nucleated cells. This includes humans, of course.) The five numbered chapters of the book reveal how each of the "Five Great Ideas" are manifested in each of an organism's nucleated cell.

It is also amazing that Nurse, who is a Nobel Laureate for his work in biology and genetics, has written a work that even readers who are new to biology or science can understand.

I hope to share more about this incredible book in the next postings. I welcome your questions and comments.