Page 142 - The Cell in 40 Topics

onsider how an automobile factory operates. All of its 1,000 or
so workers must cooperate with great discipline and in great
harmony. Several supervisory and chains of commands are in
place to ensure that organization. Each section manufactures the parts de-
manded of it. For example, engines are produced on one assembly line, and
doors in another. Everyone knows where every product will be used;
everything remains under control.
Clearly, however, if the factory employs a thousand ignorant people
with no idea of how cars are produced and tells them to find out on their
own what to produce, and how, then great confusion and chaos will ensue.
Yet the human body contains not 1,000 but 100 trillion workers, all la-
boring together in perfect harmony. These individual cells are far more
knowledgeable and better equipped than the workers in any factory. Not
only are the miraculous processes they carry out quite breathtaking, but so
also is the coordination among them. They recognize one another by means
of signals in their membranes. Stomach cells recognize stomach cells, and
hair cells recognize other hair cells (Figure 108).

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