 Among biological entities, cells are regarded as of special importance since they are widely viewed as the simplest organized systems that are unambiguously alive. Although one can debate about entities such as viruses, there is little debate that cells are living. Cells perform all the activities critical to life, from metabolism to reproduction. All cells alive today maintain themselves far from thermodynamic equilibrium with their environment and are part of a continuous lineage of cell division that goes back approximately 4 billion years. The study of cells has required developing means of materially manipulating them and our contemporary understanding of cellular phenomena integrates results from a wide range of material interventions. In introducing a special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences on the cell, O’Malley and Müller-Wille assert 