Living organisms must constantly monitor and adjust to changes in their environments. This constant adjustment is known as preserving homeostasis. To maintain some sort of equilibrium in changing surroundings, cells must continually access, download, and decode information about their internal and external environments, decide on the best response, and then respond. The word homeostasis means “standing still,” which is the opposite of “change.” But it makes sense if you think of standing still in the never-ending molecular hurricane of the cell’s environment.
