What Is Life?: Five Great Ideas in Biology

　　諾貝爾生醫奬得主保羅．納斯，道出生物學原理與如何應用於當世

　　保羅．納斯一生致力於揭露細胞是如何運作的，而今，他試圖以淺顯易懂的方式，讓每位讀者都能理解所謂「活著」，究竟是什麼意思。

　　納斯深入解析細胞、基因、演化等明生物學的五大基礎概念，除了為我們介紹促成該領域重大研究進展的研究者，也分享他在實驗室裡的經驗，讓我們了解在這過程中碰到的挑戰、幸運的突破以及驚人的發現。

　　本書提醒我們生物學在現今社會的重要性，字裡行間更飽含納斯對於探索生命豐富性的喜愛。如今，我們面對全球暖化、傳染疾病、生物多樣性減少及糧食危機等問題，了解生命到底是什麼，對於理解人類該如何在這個世界生存下去，有其必要性。(文/博客來編譯)

　　The Nobel Prize–winning scientist’s elegant explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today.

　　The renowned biologist Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In What Is Life?, he takes up the challenge of describing what it means to be alive in a way that every reader can understand.

　　It is a shared journey of discovery; step-by-step Nurse illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology―the Cell, the Gene, Evolution by Natural Selection, Life as Chemistry, and Life as Information. He introduces the scientists who made the most important advances, and, using his personal experiences in and out of the lab, he shares with us the challenges, the lucky breaks, and the thrilling eureka moments of discovery.

　　Nurse writes with delight at life’s richness and with a sense of the urgent role of biology in our time. To survive the challenges that face us all today―climate change, pandemic, loss of biodiversity and food security―it is vital that we all understand what life is.