Three are well known: cell theory - all life is made of cells, which only come from existing cells; Darwin's evolution by natural selection; and universal genetics - all life is encoded by a cypher written in the molecule DNA. The fourth, no less important, goes by the chewy name chemiosmosis, and describes the way that all living things live by drawing fuel from their surroundings and using it in a continuous chemical reaction. In summary, life, made of cells that extract energy from their environment, comes modified from what came before.
Job done; suck it, physicists! However, biology is messy, and people like me remain gainfully employed because our understanding of how chemistry becomes biology is far from complete. These grand unifying ideas lack detail, and in biology the devil lies at a molecular level of complexity that is hard to understand. Nowhere, as Philip Ball (a physicist by background) points out in his excellent book, was this more starkly apparent than when an invisible virus turned the world upside down in 2020, killing millions, infecting many more.
This story is from the January 19, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the January 19, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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