Written by leading experts in the field, the fifth edition of the Cell Physiology Sourcebook, Fifth Edition offers a critical, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary overview of essential aspects of cell physiology and biophysics, spanning from bacterial and archaeal cells to mammalian cells and tissues. The present edition incorporates new molecular insights without losing the integrative perspective of cell physiology and biophysics, as well as its foundational concepts. Our target readers are advanced students and researchers interested in understanding how cells work.

The history of this book goes back to Hugh Davson’s classic A Textbook of General Physiology, which reached its fourth and last edition in 1970. The successor of this influential work was Cell Physiology Sourcebook, first published in 1995 and edited by the late Professor Nicholas Sperelakis, with a foreword written by Davson. At that time, the knowledge of molecular and cell physiology became so vast that a single author's work, like its predecessor, was materially impossible. Professor Sperelakis, for whom we dedicate the present edition, put together an impressive volume with the contribution of various experts in fundamental areas of the field until the 4th edition, published in 2012, one year before his death. This book's success and the gap it fills motivated the present editors to continue this project, updating the entire book to reflect new developments.