When I was a kid growing up in the small town of Andrews, Texas, we had chickens in our backyard. It was something that my subdivision would definitely not allow today, but it was a great experience. While I learned responsibility, my mom bought the eggs for ten cents apiece, which was quite a bit more than they were worth!

Now that I have a family, I sometimes wish we could raise chickens in our backyard. Sometimes. One of the things about raising chickens, of course, is you have to have a place to put them. And the chicken coop we built had your traditional chicken wire lattice. If you’ve ever seen it, it has a very distinctive pattern of interconnected hexagons. What I did not realize then is that this pattern is the very most fundamental building block of life. Carbon molecules naturally form the same hexagonal shapes and can connect like that chicken wire lattice. Carbon, the same thing that makes up the humble pencil lead to the most beautiful diamond, is crucial to life. The reason why is that the bonds carbon molecules form are uniquely suited to form the basis of organic chemistry and even DNA itself.

And this pattern doesn’t stop there. We see the same pattern repeated in honeycombs (how do bees know how to make those?) and in the covering of the eye in the cornea.

But back to the chicken coop. What did I learn in organic chemistry? Well, it is more complicated than it first appears. Carbon forms different isomers and can support endless combinations of bonds that are the foundation of life itself. How do we know this? From direct observation. It was made that way. You can’t deduce how carbon molecules bond and behave, you have to observe, measure, and work really hard to understand it. And though scientists may debate on almost everything they study, there is no debate at all about the fundamental importance of carbon as the bedrock of life. If carbon molecules behaved even a tiny bit differently, none of us would be here. And why does this unique substance, found in abundance here on earth, behave as it does? Because it was made that way.