The possessors of... nuclei, the s, are the most important cells in the world. ...[A]ll plants and animals, all and fungi... essentially everything w… - Nick Lane

[B]acteria, the simplest of cells, are... so complex that we still have almost everything to learn about their invisible organization.

[B]iochemical pathways that produce the basic building blocks of life are... conserved across practically all cells.

I deliberately avoid having... [a working definition of life]. What I quote... is... from Peter Mitchell... a pioneer... of... , that essentially all cells, with very very few exceptions, are powered by... proton gradients across the membrane. So on one side of the membrane surrounding the cell you've got the high concentration on the inside, a low proton concentration [on the outside]. Protons are... the positively charged nuclei of atoms, so... [y]ou're pumping them out and... putting a charge on the membrane... That's as universally conserved across life on earth as the itself, which implies, as a mechanism, it's very early... [I]t's not something anyone ever predicted. It's not something that... emerges from a chemical understanding of the biochemistry of cells.