What good are cells, anyway?
Cells keep good stuff (raw materials
for construction, sugars and fuels,
oxygen for combusting) inside where
they can be used, and keep
bad stuff (toxins, poisonous gases,
viruses) out.
They keep genetic material contained in a
place where the molecules that can operate
on it can reach it.
Cells enable basically all of the things
that make life life.
Recall our definitions of life.
How do cells manifest themselves
in those definitions?