One of the triumphs of modern science has been our ever-improving understanding of how life works—how chemical reactions at the cellular level account for respiration, digestion, reproduction, locomotion, and a host of other living processes. This exciting subject is biochemistry—and its allied field of molecular biology. In the past century, progress in these complementary disciplines has been astonishing, and a week rarely passes without major advances in medicine, physiology, genetics, nutrition, agriculture, or other areas, where biochemistry and molecular biology are shedding new light on life.

现代科学的胜利之一是我们对生命如何运作的理解不断提高--细胞水平的化学反应是呼吸、消化、繁殖、运动和其他一系列生命过程的原因。这个令人兴奋的主题是生物化学及其相关领域的分子生物学。在过去的一个世纪里，这些互补学科的进展令人震惊，在医学、生理学、遗传学、营养学、农业或其他领域，生物化学和分子生物学在这些领域取得了新的进展，很少有一个星期没有重大进展。