Overview

In the fifteenth century, as astronomers charted the skies and explorers mapped the globe, the nature of life itself remained a mystery. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that Robert Hooke, looking through one of the earliest microscopes, coined the term cell. Nearly two centuries later, biologists established that all living organisms—from animals and plants to algae and fungi—are composed of cells. Around the same time, Charles Darwin introduced his theory of evolution, proposing that all life on Earth shares a common origin. Today, the scientific community has defined that origin as LUCA—the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Unraveling how LUCA—the ancestral cell—emerged billions of years ago and gradually evolved into the vast diversity of life-forms we see today is a fascinating journey through history, biology, and the essence of what it means to be alive. Blending art with science, biologist Christian Sardet takes you on an exploration of DNA, RNA, proteins, protists, viruses, cell reproduction, aging, death, and more. Written in clear, accessible language and accompanied by artful illustrations, Cells: The Illustrated Story of Life offers an authoritative and visually captivating overview of the building blocks of life. Designed for visual learners and curious minds alike, this immersive exploration of life and evolution brings readers up to date with the latest discoveries—revealing how cells function, how they have evolved, and why they fascinate us.

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Reviews

""Praise for the French Edition ""Whether [you’re] passionate about biology or a novice, one enters this book as if opening a treasure chest."" -- Pour La Science / Scientific American (France) ""Christian Sardet has masterfully combined the beauty of art with the rigor of science."" -- Le Monde ""Vibrant words and drawings . . . Even if you didn’t love biology courses, this book reads like a novel with unexpected and captivating episodes."" -- L’Obs ""These superbly graphic and colorful pages allow us to follow the odyssey of life with great pleasure. A fine achievement."" -- We Demain magazine ""A fascinating journey through time and the infinitely small."" -- Arte 28 Minutes (French prime-time TV) ""An inner journey, this book with its mesmerizing images offers a deep dive into the heart of life."" -- Beaux-arts

Author Information

Christian Sardet, PhD, is a founder of and emeritus researcher at the Developmental Biology Laboratory at the Institut de la Mer de Villefranche (IMEV), under the aegis of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Paris-Sorbonne University. He earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many scientific publications and of the book Plankton: Wonders of the Drifting World (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and is one of the founders of the Tara Oceans expedition. Sardet is the recipient of two prizes from the French Academy of Sciences and the Légion d’Honneur, among many other awards. He is also an artist and the creator of award-winning films. Sardet lives near Nice in the south of France. Eric Karsenti holds a PhD in immunology and cell biology from the Pasteur Institute in Paris. After working as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Marc Kirschner’s laboratory at UCSF, he went on to establish his own group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, which made significant contributions to our understanding of the cell-cycle clock, mitotic spindle assembly, and cell morphogenesis. At EMBL, he established the Cell Biology and Biophysics unit, an interdisciplinary team of cell biologists, geneticists, physicists, and imaging developers. He created the Tara Oceans program, which began as an around-the-world expedition to map the plankton ecosystem to a depth of 1000 meters, and directed the Tara Oceans Consortium until 2021. Karsenti is emeritus research director at the CNRS, visiting senior scientist at EMBL, and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the French Academy of Sciences, and the board of the Tara Oceans foundation.

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