The cell's production system can be likened to a factory, the likes of which have not yet been built, and which works with the most advanced technology (Figure 1.2). This imaginary factory is a huge facility, made up of numerous highly developed units each producing different high-tech products. It uses some of these products within its inner structure, and some of them it assembles to produce new production machinery. It exports many of its products as raw materials or machinery. Using up the least amount of energy to produce the highest yield, it is more environmentally friendly than any present factory anywhere on the face of the Earth. It destroys its own waste and thus almost never pollutes its environment.
The factory's production and operating systems have been perfectly designed. The directors, engineers, workers-in short, the entire staff-are made up of robots and computers able to perform their duties faultlessly, and are so advanced that we would encounter them only in science fiction films.
Production in the cell takes place just as this imaginary factory. Specialized and complex protein molecules, called enzymes, take the place of the factory's robots and machines. The cell's knowledge of how to manage itself is stored in a large, helical molecule called DNA, highly specialized for this process and formed from the assembly of numerous atoms.
Now, let's look at the structure of this bewilderingly miraculous molecule and the processes it manages to carry out.
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