Table of Contents
Introduction 10
Life
A window into the body Experimental Physiology 18
How feebly men have labored in the field of Anatomy from the times of Galen Anatomy 20
Animals are machines Animals are not like humans 26
I can make urea without kidneys Biochemicals can be made 27
The true biological atom The cellular nature of life 28
All cells come from cells How cells are produced 32
Life is not a miracle Making life 34
Smaller cells reside inside the larger cells Complex cells 38
A flexible mosaic of gatekeepers Cell membranes 42
Food and Energy
Life is a chemical process Metabolism 48
Plants have a faculty to correct bad air Photosynthesis 50
The virtues of oranges and lemons Essential nutrients 56
The conversion of victuals into virtues Digestion 58
The saccharine, the oily, and the albuminous Food groups 60
A better element does not exist on which to base life The beginnings of organic chemistry 61
Life without free oxygen Fermentation 62
Cells are chemical factories Enzymes as biological catalysts 64
They must fit together like lock and key How enzymes work 66
The metabolic pathway that releases energy from food Respiration 68
Photosynthesis is the absolute prerequisite for all life Reactions of photosynthesis 70
Transport and Regulation
It had a movement, as it were, in a circle Circulation of the blood 76
Blood passes through many windings Capillaries 80
The heart is simply a muscle The heart muscle 81
Plants imbibe and perspire Plant transpiration 82
Chemical messengers carried by the bloodstream Hormones trigger responses 84
The constant conditions might be termed equilibria Homeostasis 86
Air combining with the blood Hemoglobin 90
Oils upon the creaky machinery of life Hormones help regulate the body 92
The master chemists of our internal environment Kidneys and excretion 98
No auxin-no growth Plant growth regulators 100
The plant puts its fluids in motion Plant translocation 102
Brain and behavior
The muscles contracted into tonic convulsions Excitable tissues 108
The faculty of sensation, perception, and volition The brain controls behavior 109
Three principal colors, red, yellow, and blue Color vision 110
We speak with the left hemisphere Speech and the brain 114
The spark excites the action of the nerveo-muscular force Electrical nerve impulses 116
Instinct and learning go hand in hand Innate and learned behavior 118
Cells with delicate and elegant shapes Nerve cells 124
Brain maps of man Organization of the brain cortex 126
The impulse within the nerve liberates chemical substances Synapses 130
A complete theory of how a muscle contracts Muscle contraction 132
Memory makes us who we are Memory storage 134
The object is held with two paws Animals and tools 136
Health and Disease
Sickness is not sent by the gods The natural basis of disease 142
The dose makes the poison Drugs and disease 143
The microbes will have the last word Germ theory 144
The first object must be the destruction of any septic germs Antisepsis 152
Remove it, but it will spring up again Cancer metastasis 154
There are four different types of human blood Blood groups 156
A microbe to destroy other microbes Antibiotics 158
A piece of bad news wrapped in protein Viruses 160
There will be no more smallpox Vaccination for preventing disease 164
Antibodies are the touchstone of immunological theory Immune response 168
Growth and Reproduction
The little animals of the sperm The discovery of gametes 176
Some organisms have dispensed with sexual reproduction Asexual reproduction 178
A plant, like an animal hath organical parts Pollination 180
From the most general forms the less general are developed Epigenesis 184
The union of egg-cell and spermatic cell Fertilization 186
The mother-cell divides equally between the daughter nuclei Mitosis 188
On this, the resemblance of a child to its parent depends Meiosis 190
First proof of the autonomy of life Stem cells 194
Master control genes Embryological development 196
The creation of the greatest happiness In vitro fertilization 198
Dolly, the first clone of an adult animal Cloning 202
Inheritance
Ideas of species, inheritance, variation The laws of inheritance 208
The physical basis of heredity Chromosomes 216
The X element Sex determination 220
DNA is the transforming principle The chemicals of inheritance 221
One gene-one enzyme What are genes? 222
I could turn a developing snail's egg into an elephant Jumping genes 226
Two interwoven spiral staircases The double helix 228
DNA embodies the genetic code of all living organisms The genetic code 232
A cut, paste, and copy operation Genetic engineering 234
The sequence of the beast Sequencing DNA 240
The first draft of the human book of life The Human Genome Project 242
Genetic scissors: a tool for rewriting the code of life Gene editing 244
Diversity of Life and Evolution
The first step is to know the things themselves Naming and classifying life 250
Relics of a primeval world Extinct species 254
Animals have in course of time been profoundly altered Life evolves 256
The strongest live and the weakest die Natural selection 258
Mutations yield new and constant forms Mutation 264
Natural selection spreads favorable mutations Modern synthesis 266
Drastic change occurs in an isolated population Speciation 272
All true classification is genealogical Cladistics 274
The clock-like property of evolution The molecular clock 276
We are survival machines Selfish genes 277
The extinction coincides with the impact Mass extinctions 278
Ecology
All Bodies have some Dependance upon one another Food chains 284
Animals of one continent are not found in another Plant and animal biogeography 286
The interaction of habitat, life forms, and species Community succession 290
A competition between prey and a predatory species Predator-prey relationships 292
Living matter is incessantly moving, decomposing, and reforming Recycling and natural cycles 294
One will crowd out the other Competitive exclusion principle 298
The basic units of nature on Earth Ecosystems 299
Networks through which energy is flowing Trophic levels 300
An organism's niche is its profession Niches 302
Man's war against nature is inevitably war against himself Human impact on ecosystems 304
Division of area by ten divides the fauna by two Island biogeography 312
Gaia is the superorganism composed of all life The Gaia hypothesis 314
Directory 316
Glossary 324
Index 328
Quote Attributions 335
Acknowledgments 336