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The Pulitzer-winning oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee recalls the thrill of seeing for the first time the extraordinary \u2018luminosity\u2019 of a living cell. In his latest work, The Song of the Cell, he explores the history, the present and the future of cellular biology. He tells Adam Rutherford that without understanding cells you can\u2019t understand the human body, medicine, and especially the story of life itself.

\u2018Once upon a time I fell in love with a cell.\u2019 So recalls the leading cardiologist Sian Harding, when she looked closely at a single heart muscle cell, and she found a \u2018deeper beauty\u2019 revealing the \u2018perfection of the heart\u2019s construction\u2019. In her book, The Exquisite Machine, she describes how new scientific developments are opening up the mysteries of the heart, and why a \u2018broken heart\u2019 might be more than a literary flight of fancy.

The prize-winning science fiction writer Paul McAuley was once a research scientist studying symbiosis, especially single-celled algae inside host cells. He has since used his understanding of science to write books that ask questions about life on earth and outer-space, and about the implications of the latest cutting edge research, from nanotechnology to gene editing. His 2001 novel The Secret of Life, which features the escape of a protean Martian microorganism from a Chinese laboratory, has just been reissued.

Producer: Katy Hickman