Physics had to come to terms with the transition from commonsense Newtonian theory to the counterintuitive world of relativity and quantum mechanics. Now it's biology's turn

Paul Nurse has a modest way with his ideas. "Are you like me when you read books on relativity?" he asks. "You think you have got it and then you close the book, and you find it has all slipped away from you. And if you think you have trouble with relativity, wait till you take on quantum mechanics. It is utterly incomprehensible." Not a bad admission for a Nobel prizewinner.

The point for Nurse is that biology is facing a similar leap into the incomprehensible as physics did at the beginning of the 20th century when the ordered world of Newtonian theory was replaced by relativity and quantum mechanics. Now a revolution awaits the study of living creatures.

In the past, we have seen biological explanations as commonsense. They have explained how genes direct the manufacture of proteins or account for the appearance of disease through the behaviour of bacteria and viruses. But such simplicity is likely to disappear in the near future, argues Nurse, who won the 2001 Nobel prize for physiology for his work on the role of DNA in cell division. The structure of DNA may be elegant and may reveal the mechanism that controls heredity, but its real importance lies with the way it stores digital information. Nor is it the only system in a living being that stores and processes information. The cell can be seen as a tiny computer, for example.

Understanding how the different parts of the body process information and then distribute it is the next task facing modern biology, says the 61-year-old biologist. How does homeostasis – the mechanism by which an organism maintains its biological status quo – work? And how do cells communicate with each other?

Understanding these networks will reveal "a strange, counterintuitive world", insists Nurse, who takes up the presidency of the Royal Society at the end of this month. Organisms will be revealed in their true complexity, he believes, and that will be crucial for arriving at a proper understanding of the nature of life.