Book description
The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist…
Why read it?
4 authors picked The Vital Question as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I cherish this book as I can dip into any part of it and will always learn something new.
I have always been fascinated by the origin of things, and there is nothing more fundamental than the origin of life itself. Nick Lane is on the front line of such research and brings a lot to bear down on this question, from his own laboratory experiments to theoretical biochemistry, all without a hint of condescension. Nick wants to take the reader with him on a personal journey to discover why we are here, and this is a journey I wouldn’t…
From Graham's list on science in action written by scientists.
This is my favorite explanation of how inorganic molecules could have self-assembled to create living cells from scratch.
No human being has ever come close to doing this in a lab, but then Nature had 2 billion years to work on it. The sheer complexity of the result is laughably mindboggling, but no matter—somehow it all worked, and all life has built upon this platform ever since.
And at the core of the whole structure is a simple 64-bit code made up of four letters read in groups of three.
From Geoffrey's list on engineers who want to take a break and think big.
How did the first life form emerge from the chaos of Earth, billions of years ago? How did we come to be? Nick Lane systematically debunks the idea of a primordial soup, instead painting an equally amazing picture of alkaline hydrothermal vents acting like ancient bioreactors deep in the sea, their porous walls forming what might be thought of as the first biological membranes; the evolution of the proton pump, fueling all that happened afterward; and the improbable endosymbiosis between an archaeon and a bacterium that sparked the origins of the mitochondrion and the birth of complex life. Whether or…
From Carole's list on nonfiction for my sci-fi future worldbuilding.
If you love The Vital Question...
The High House
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
As a student, I was enthralled by Jacob Bronowski’s TV series The Ascent of Man. He talked about the origin of life and the first experiments that tried to reconstruct how life began. This made me yearn to know not the lab test-tube chemistry I was studying but the chemistry of living things and the earth itself. Since then the knowledge gained of this deep chemistry has surpassed my wildest dreams and my ambition has been to share it.
Nick Lane and his co-workers have traced the most plausible origin of life in the mysterious white chimneys – first…
From Peter's list on the deep history of life on earth.
If you love The Vital Question...
The High House
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
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