Ball P. How Life Works. A User's Guide to the New Biology UK Edition 2023

Textbook in PDF format

A cutting-edge new vision of biology that proposes to revise our concept of what life is – from Science Book Prize winner and former Nature editor Philip Ball. Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works have been exposed as incomplete, misleading, or wrong.
Prologue
The End of the Machine: A New View of Life
Genes: What DNA Really Does
RNA and Transcription: Reading the Message
Proteins: Structure and Unstructure
Networks: The Webs That Make Us
Cells: Decisions, Decisions
Tissues: How to Build, When to Stop
Bodies: Uncovering the Pattern
Agency: How Life Gets Goals and Purposes
Troubleshooting: Rethinking Medicine
Making and Hacking: Redesigning Life