The Cell: A Very Short Introduction

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 11/01/2011
ISBN: 9780199578757
Pages: 145
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 6.70h x 4.20w x 0.50d

Review Citations: Choice 08/01/2012