Portland Public Library

The song of the cell, an exploration of medicine and the new human, Siddhartha Mukherjee

eng

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other

The song of the cell

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1345698030

Siddhartha Mukherjee

an exploration of medicine and the new human

From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, about the transformation of medicine through our radical new ability to manipulate cells. Rich with Mukherjee's revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, this is the third book in this extraordinary writer's exploration of what it means to be human. Mukherjee begins this magnificent story in the late 1600s, when a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked down their handmade microscopes. What they saw introduced a radical concept that swept through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences, and altering both forever

Prelude : "The elementary particles of organisms" -- Introduction: "We shall always return to the cell" -- Part one. Discovery. The original cell : an invisible world ; The visible cell : "Fictitious stories about the little animals" ; The universal cell: "The smallest particle of this little world" ; The pathogenic cell: microbes, infections, and the antibiotic revolution -- part two. The one and the many. The organized cell : the interior anatomy of the cell ; The dividing cell : cellular reproduction and the birth of IVF ; The tampered cell : Lulu, Nana, and the transgressions of trust ; The developing cell : a cell becomes an organism -- part three. Blood. The restless cell : circles of blood ; The healing cell : platelets, clots, and a "modern epidemic" ; The guardian cell : neutrophils and their kampf against pathogens ; The defending cell : when a body meets a body ; The discerning cell : the subtle intelligence of the T cell ; The tolerant cell : the self, horror antitoxicus, and immunotherapy -- part four. Knowledge. The pandemic -- part five. Organs. The citizen cell : the benefits of belonging ; The contemplating cell : the many-minded neuron ; The orchestrating cell : homeostasis, fixity, and balance -- part six. Rebirth. The renewing cell : stem cells and the birth of transplantation ; The repairing cell : injury, decay, and constancy ; The selfish cell : the ecological equation and cancer ; The songs of the cell -- Epilogue: "Better versions of me."

adult

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