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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

I can definitely recommend "Molecular Biology of the Cell", which is a undergrad-level textbook about cells. The latest edition is always very expensive, but you can get older versions cheaply. Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0815341067

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I've been reading another textbook on the same topic recently, and find it endlessly fascinating. I can grok quantum mechanics intuitively on some level, because it's governed by simple mathematical laws, even if those laws are quite different from everyday experience of how physical objects work. Understanding how ordinary matter (atoms, molecules, then solids and fluids) forms out of fundamental interactions is, in principle, just a matter of solving for N variables, and you can use statistics when N gets large. But the complexity of how life exploits the precise interactions between thousands of different molecules to assemble complex machines, on scales from single proteins to whole organisms, involving thousands of interconnected feedback loops to sustain the process and counteract the large-N averaging effect of the second law of thermodynamics, is just mind-boggling.

If you're a programmer and think 10 million lines of code constitutes a complex system, reading about how cells work on a molecular level should be humbling.

If you've got a physics background, you might also enjoy Physical Biology of the Cell [0].

I haven't read it personally, so I can't vouch for it, but I've seen it recommended as one of the go-to texts for those interested in the biophysics of cells.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Physical-Biology-Cell-Rob-Phillips/dp/...

You can access a recent copy of Molecular Biology of the Cell through the US National Center for Biotechnology Information:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/

I am reading it right now, and it is amazing how complex and sophisticated cellular dynamics are.

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