About the Author For the past two decades, Cecie Starr has been known as one of the best-selling biology textbook authors. Her texts, appreciated for their clarity in both the written word and the visual representation of biological concepts, include multiple editions of BIOLOGY: THE UNITY AND DIVERSITY OF LIFE, BIOLOGY: CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS, and BIOLOGY TODAY AND TOMORROW. Her original dream was to become an architect. Instead of building houses, she now builds, with care and attention to detail, incredible texts based on this philosophy: "I invite students into a chapter through an intriguing story. Once inside, they get the great windows that biologists construct on the world of life. Biology is not just another house. It is a conceptual mansion. I hope to do it justice. " Christine Evers has been creating multimedia and Web-based materials to supplement Starr and other science texts for ten years. She earned her B. S. in Biology from SUNY Stony Brook. After working as a research assistant studying the developmental biology of slime mold, she was awarded an N. S. F. fellowship to attend Yale, where she studied evolutionary biology and honeybee behavior. She has a strong interest in science education and serves as a member of her local school board. Lisa Starr earned her B. A. in Chemistry/Biochemistry from the University of California at San Diego Revelle College in 1982. Over the next five years, she became expert in molecular and cell biology as she helped build a veterinary virology research program at the startup biotech firm Syntro (which was later spun off into Protein Polymer Technologies). During this time, Lisa invented the cDNA cloning kit and the mRNA isolation kit that launched Invitrogen (now part of Life Technologies). She left Syntro to launch a molecular biology division for a veterinary vaccine company (Synbiotics, later acquired by Pfizer Animal Health), and then spent seven years at The Scripps Research Institute investigating integrin isoform expression in development and cancer metastasis and training postdoctoral candidates. She was recruited to start up the biotech firm Ixsys/Applied Molecular Evolution (later acquired by Lilly) and to establish proof-of-concept for combinatorial library construction as well as antibody randomization/humanization at the fledgling firm. Prior to joining the Starr franchise, she was recruited to start up Desmos, another biotech firm, that was later spun off into Cythera/Novocell/ViaCyte. Since 1997, Lisa has been responsible for the incredible art in the Starr biology textbooks, and began authoring the books in 2004.