About Life

Introduction.- Ingredients of the Simplest Cells (Prokaryotes and the Sizes of their Contents).- Bigger Cells (Eukaryotic Cells and their Contents).- Hives of Industry (A Survey of Intermediary Metabolism).- Delights of Transport (Mechanisms by which Cellular Contents are Moved around).- As if Standing Still (Cellular Homeostasis and Regulatory Processes).- Internal State and Gene Expression (Transcription and its Control).- Sustaining and Changing the Internal State (The Interrelationship between Gene Expression and the Cell’s Current Composition and Functional State).- Responding to the Environment (Signal Processing and its Relationship to Cell Structure, Metabolism and Gene Expression).- The Living State (A general characterization of 'life').- Stability and Change in DNA (Why DNA is highly stable and a Survey of the Mechanisms by which it can Change).- The Spice of Life (Variety, Habitats, Natural Selection, Symbiosis, Ecosystems).- Curriculum Vitae (An Outline History of Life on Earth).- The Origin of Life (Major Ideas and Unanswered Questions).- Other Worlds (Ideas about Extraterrestrial Life, including a Critique of the Assumptions behind the 'Drake Equation' and the SETI Project).- Intelligent Behaviour and Brains (The Meaning of 'Intelligence').- Human Intelligence (Human Evolution and the Question of Human Uniqueness).- Cells, Brains and Computers: towards a Characterisation of Mind.- Glossary.- Bibliography.