The huge progress of the biological sciences is revealing a material organization of amazing complexity which is common to all living beings, from the single-celled bacterium to man. The deep sense of such an organization can be expressed with the word "metabolism": every organism is the creator and at the same time the result of a continuous self-fabrication, thanks to the transformation of portions of the world in its own living body. This is achieved thanks to the innumerable shapes and functions of proteins, and their continuous fabrication based on information and meanings.

Each living cell is separated from the surrounding world by a membrane, but at the same time it totally depends on the environment with which it constantly exchanges energy, matter and information.

Both complexity and cooperation between components emerge in living beings at the subcellular and cellular level and, for multicellular organisms, at the level of tissues, organs and systems. But also  at an even higher level, that is, of populations and ecosystems. This phenomenon includes an impressive set of interactions, mediated by different communication channels, among which the chemical one, leading to interactions whose final results can be very different and even of opposite sign. It is often possible to observe how from antagonistic relationships new ones can evolve, based on cooperative processes.

The living being somehow perceives the external environment and reacts to it, always in an attempt to assert and survive within the world. This is clear, for example, in reproduction and even more in development in which, starting from a single cell, organisms, such as humans, containing ten thousand billion, highly differentiated cells can be formed.

The path leading to appearance and evolution of living beings is extraordinarily complex and its mechanisms are still largely unknown. A little less than 4 billion years ago the first single-celled organisms were formed, probably on the ocean floor, following the spontaneous assembly of chemical species. Three and a half billion years ago the microorganisms had already colonized all the waters. But the subsequent evolution did not follow linear paths: it was characterized by long periods of stasis and unexpected bursts, such as the one that led to the appearance of multicellular organisms about a billion years ago. Many questions are still unanswered regarding the mechanisms that led to these events. While the influence of the environment and the selection of the fittest have certainly played a role in directing evolution, other factors, based rather on the cooperation between organisms, have had an impact on the process on a global scale. This is the case, for example, of the appearance of oxidative metabolism following the accumulation of oxygen produced by photosynthesis. Some evidence also supports the possibility that organisms, on the basis of cellular and molecular mechanisms still largely unexplored, own an intrinsic capacity to evolve and acquire complexity.

What do a mouse, an elephant and a very long column of penguins that march from a region of the Antarctic to another have in common? In this section of the exhibition we will try to make a journey through the immense biodiversity of living beings in order to see how the creative power of life has found its ways of expression not outside but right inside the world of the necessary and universal laws of nature.