Building Bodies

Abstract

Molecular biology and cell biology study the same subjects—living cells—but they approach it from opposite angles. Molecular biologists take a bottom-up approach. They look very closely at the components of cells and then try to fit all these individual puzzle pieces together into a coherent image. Cell biologists, on the other hand, often take a top-down approach. They observe whole cells and then try to ferret out what the individual molecules are doing. These two approaches are gradually merging, as molecular biologists work with larger and larger assemblies, and cell biologists develop ever more powerful methods of microscopy to probe finer and finer details. Together, they are building a detailed image of how cells, and our whole bodies, work.