to electricity. t give eac is t it is alliny scale: a mere 0.1 volts traveling distances measured in nanometers.

    up and it ranslate as a jolt of ty million volts per meter, abouttorm.

    ever t to fundamentally the same plan:

    ter casing or membrane, a nucleus ion to keep you going, and a busy space betoplasm. t, as most of us imagine it, a durable, rubbery casing, somet you is made up of a type of fatty material knoency “of a ligo quoteS seems surprisingly insubstantial, bear in mind t at tly. to anyter becomesa kind of y gel, and a lipid is like iron.

    If you could visit a cell, you  like it. Bloo a scale at  tself oskeleton. it, millions upon millionsof objects—some tballs, ot likebullets. t be a place you could stand  being pummeled and rippedtimes every second from every direction. Even for its full-time occupants trand of DNA is on average attacked or damagedonce every 8.4 seconds—ten times in a day—by cs t, and eac be sly stitc to perish.

    teins are especially lively, spinning, pulsating, and flying into eaco abillion times a second. Enzymes, type of protein, daso a tasks a second. Like greatly speeded up s, to t one. Some monitorpassing proteins and mark  are irreparably damaged or flaed, teins proceed to a structure called a proteasome, s used to build neeins. Some types of protein existfor less t all lead existences t areinconceivably frenzied. As de Duve notes, “t necessarily remainentirely beyond tion oo t.”

    But sloo a speed at