Abstract
The origin of life clearly lies in a living cell first observed by Sir Robert Hooke, but exactly where in a cell the essence of life can be localized is still unclear. Over several centuries careful investigators have been trying to find a single source to claim it as the point of origin of life. Is it in the cellular inner core where metabolic processes take place, is it around the cellular boundary where the cell’s transport properties couple with processes controlling many dynamical aspects of proteins, or is it in some other yet unknown region, or finally, is it nowhere specific but rather, due to a fundamental mechanism which causes animate matter to qualitatively differ from inanimate matter? Structural and molecular biology have considerably developed our understanding of cellular compartments and molecular building blocks of cells, but the ongoing developments in these fields have raised multifaceted questions regarding cells and cellular processes. Both the cellular inner core and the cellular wall, known as a membrane, have been understood as not just composites of different compartments working independently or collectively and performing many critical functions for a living body. Detailed analyses of the known functions of various cellular components suggest that the real discovery of the origin of their functions is yet to be made.
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Ashrafuzzaman, M., Tuszynski, J. (2012). Introduction. In: Membrane Biophysics. Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16105-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16105-6_1
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