num_pages: 152
description: In this Very Short Introduction Terrence Allen and Graham Cowling offer an illuminating account of the nature of cells--their basic structure forms division signaling and programmed death. Allen and Cowling start with the simple prokaryotic cell--cells with no nucleus--and show how the bodies of more complex plants and animals consist of billions of eukaryotic cells of varying kinds adapted to fill different roles--red blood cells muscle cells branched neurons. The authors also show that each cell is an astonishingly complex chemical factory the activities of which we have only begun to unravel in the past fifty years.
language: English
title: The Cell: A Very Short Introduction
publisher: Oxford University Press