The article by H. Jeong, B. Tombor, R. Albert, Z. N. Oltvai, and A.-L. Barabási presents a systematic comparative mathematical analysis of the metabolic networks of 43 organisms from all three domains of life. Despite significant variations in individual constituents and pathways, these metabolic networks exhibit striking similarities in their topological scaling properties, resembling the inherent organization of complex non-biological systems. The study reveals that metabolic networks follow a power-law distribution, characteristic of scale-free networks, with a few highly connected nodes (hubs) dominating the overall connectivity. This scale-free structure is robust to random errors and maintains a conserved network diameter across all organisms, suggesting a common blueprint for the large-scale organization of cellular interactions. The findings indicate that the metabolic organization is not only identical across living organisms but also complies with design principles of robust and error-tolerant systems. The authors also explore the small-world character of metabolic networks, where the average path length between any two nodes remains constant despite increasing network complexity. These results suggest that the large-scale architecture of metabolic networks is shaped by evolutionary processes to ensure robustness and error tolerance, providing insights into the fundamental design principles of cellular systems.The article by H. Jeong, B. Tombor, R. Albert, Z. N. Oltvai, and A.-L. Barabási presents a systematic comparative mathematical analysis of the metabolic networks of 43 organisms from all three domains of life. Despite significant variations in individual constituents and pathways, these metabolic networks exhibit striking similarities in their topological scaling properties, resembling the inherent organization of complex non-biological systems. The study reveals that metabolic networks follow a power-law distribution, characteristic of scale-free networks, with a few highly connected nodes (hubs) dominating the overall connectivity. This scale-free structure is robust to random errors and maintains a conserved network diameter across all organisms, suggesting a common blueprint for the large-scale organization of cellular interactions. The findings indicate that the metabolic organization is not only identical across living organisms but also complies with design principles of robust and error-tolerant systems. The authors also explore the small-world character of metabolic networks, where the average path length between any two nodes remains constant despite increasing network complexity. These results suggest that the large-scale architecture of metabolic networks is shaped by evolutionary processes to ensure robustness and error tolerance, providing insights into the fundamental design principles of cellular systems.