The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas (Text TOW #22)

A famous researcher, writer, and medical professor from Princeton and Harvard University, Lewis Thomas coalesced his knowledge and experience about humanity and the environment into one short essay, “The Lives of a Cell”. Exploring the connection between organisms and Earth, Thomas concludes that the relationship between mother nature and its offspring is mutually beneficial, that Earth is like a singe cell.

Despite his eloquence of beauty between nature and man, Thomas, at the time he wrote the essay, only desired to talk to the intellectuals in the society. Written in 1971 and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, “The Lives of a Cell” is for those who at least received a decent medical education and were interested in the field of biology. The biological jargon such as “mitochondria” and “plasmids” are not for average readers.

Though the audience is limited, the essay is not. Using a wide range of examples, Thomas subtly compares planet Earth with the compositions of a single biological cell and describes the mutual dependencies of the two. Starting off with a components of cells, Thomas wrote “organelles as Mitochondria turned out to be little separate creatures….with their own DNA and RNA quite different from ours”(Oates 339). As he transitioned to the structure of cells, Thomas said “My centrioles, basal bodies, each with its own special genome, are as foreign, and as essential, as aphids in anthills”, concluding with the summary that ecosystem of cells are complex and interlocking with each other

From there, Thomas began to include the elements of Earth, making convincing comparisons between the cell and the planet. He described the uniformity of earth’s life, and remarked how “the enzymes of grass are like those of whales, just as how most organelles of a cell are linked together” (Oates 359). He commented about virus and the mutual dependability of all elements with the single cell structure, saying its astonishing ability to “pass around heredity as though at a great party and a medium for change and mutation”, just as how a cell has little RNA and enzyme molecules to proliferate genetic materials, just as how changes and mutations occur in a cell’s genetic code(Oates 360). The comparison between Earth and the cell is striking, and the elements under the two’s membranes could only thrive through a harmony with the whole.

Earth is like a single cell.