This is a course about two things:
- investigating the emergence of life on Earth, and
- understanding the fundamental components of life that all of us living organisms share
Human beings have long sought answers to questions like, Why are we here? What is "here" exactly? Where did we come from? What does it mean to be alive? How does my body do this life thing, anyway? Carl Sagan once said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." In this course, we are going to learn about life by first inventing the universe. We will start with the Big Bang, and the important events that paved the way for our home planet. We'll discuss Earth and its formation, and the features that make it ideal for the evolution of complex life. We will spend the bulk of our time examining the various theories of how living organisms emerged from the prebiotic chemistry of early Earth, using this as a lens through which to discuss the cellular basis of life and its evolution. My hope is that by the end of this course, you will have a richer understanding and appreciation of our home planet, and the deep ties that bind us to all the organisms that have ever lived on it.
This repo contains the source for the Spring 2022 Cellular Basis of Life course website. This digital course "textbook" was built using the R package bookdown.