Author : Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 28,25 MB
Release : 1990-09-13
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780521398282
The mysteries surrounding the origins of life on earth are written in detective story fashion by a world famous scientist in this popular version of Genetic Takeover, originally published in 1982.
Author : Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith
Publisher :
Page : 131 pages
File Size : 50,63 MB
Release : 1985
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780521275224
Uses the detection techniques of Sherlock Holmes to examine the theories concerning the origins of life on Earth
Author : Horst Rauchfuss
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 24,71 MB
Release : 2008-10-15
Category : Nature
ISBN : 3540788239
How did life begin on the early Earth? We know that life today is driven by the universal laws of chemistry and physics. By applying these laws over the past ?fty years, en- mous progress has been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms that are the foundations of the living state. For instance, just a decade ago, the ?rst human genome was published, all three billion base pairs. Using X-ray diffraction data from crystals, we can see how an enzyme molecule or a photosynthetic reaction center steps through its catalytic function. We can even visualize a ribosome, central to all life, translate - netic information into a protein. And we are just beginning to understand how molecular interactions regulate thousands of simultaneous reactions that continuously occur even in the simplest forms of life. New words have appeared that give a sense of this wealth of knowledge: The genome, the proteome, the metabolome, the interactome. But we can’t be too smug. We must avoid the mistake of the physicist who, as the twentieth century began, stated con?dently that we knew all there was to know about physics, that science just needed to clean up a few dusty corners. Then came relativity, quantum theory, the Big Bang, and now dark matter, dark energy and string theory. Similarly in the life sciences, the more we learn, the better we understand how little we really know. There remains a vast landscape to explore, with great questions remaining.
Author : Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 18,48 MB
Release : 2013-03-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9401734151
Life appears ungraspable, yet its understanding lies at the heart of current preoccupations. In our attempt to understand life through its origins, the ambition of the present collection is to unravel the network of the origin of the various spheres of sense that carry it onwards. The primogenital matrix of generation (Tymieniecka), elaborated as the fulcrum of this collection, elucidates the main riddles of the scientific / philosophical controversies concerning the status of various spheres that seek to make sense of life.
Author : Richard Gordon
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 1190 pages
File Size : 15,63 MB
Release : 2024-08-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 1119901200
This book surveys the models for the origin of life and presents a new model starting with shaped droplets and ending with life as polygonal Archaea; it collects the most published micrographs of Archaea (discovered only in 1977), which support this conclusion, and thus provides the first visual survey of Archaea. Origin of Life via Archaea’s purpose is to add a new hypothesis on what are called “shaped droplets”, as the starting point, for flat, polygonal Archaea, supporting the Vesicles First hypothesis. The book contains over 6000 distinct references and micrographs of 440 extant species of Archaea, 41% of which exhibit polygonal phenotypes. It surveys the intellectual battleground of the many ideas of the origin of life on earth, chemical equilibrium, autocatalysis, and biotic polymers. This book contains 17 chapters, some coauthored, on a wide range of topics on the origin of life, including Archaea’s origin, patterns, and species. It shows how various aspects of the origin of life may have occurred at chemical equilibrium, not requiring an energy source, contrary to the general assumption. For the reader’s value, its compendium of Archaea micrographs might also serve many other interesting questions about Archaea. One chapter presents a theory for the shape of flat, polygonal Archaea in terms of the energetics at the surface, edges and corners of the S-layer. Another shows how membrane peptides may have originated. The book also includes a large table of most extant Archaea, that is searchable in the electronic version. It ends with a chapter on problems needing further research. Audience This book will be used by astrobiologists, origin of life biologists, physicists of small systems, geologists, biochemists, theoretical and vesicle chemists.
Author : Stoyan K. Smoukov
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 17,95 MB
Release : 2023-03-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 1119555523
Conflicting Models for the Origin of Life Conflicting Models for the Origin of Life provides a forum to compare and contrast the many hypotheses that have been put forward to explain the origin of life. There is a revolution brewing in the field of Origin of Life: in the process of trying to figure out how Life started, many researchers believe there is an impending second creation of life, not necessarily biological. Up-to-date understanding is needed to prepare us for the technological, and societal changes it would bring. Schrodinger’s 1944 “What is life?” included the insight of an information carrier, which inspired the discovery of the structure of DNA. In “Conflicting Models of the Origin of Life” a selection of the world’s experts are brought together to cover different aspects of the research: from progress towards synthetic life – artificial cells and sub-cellular components, to new definitions of life and the unexpected places life could (have) emerge(d). Chapters also cover fundamental questions of how memory could emerge from memoryless processes, and how we can tell if a molecule may have emerged from life. Similarly, cutting-edge research discusses plausible reactions for the emergence of life both on Earth and on exoplanets. Additional perspectives from geologists, philosophers and even roboticists thinking about the origin of life round out this volume. The text is a state-of-the-art snapshot of the latest developments on the emergence of life, to be used both in graduate classes and by citizen scientists. Audience Researchers in any area of astrobiology, as well as others interested in the origins of life, will find a modern and current review of the field and the current debates and obstacles. This book will clearly illustrate the current state-of-the-art and engage the imagination and creativity of experts across many disciplines.
Author : Julian Chela-Flores
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 415 pages
File Size : 37,57 MB
Release : 2011-06-28
Category : Science
ISBN : 940101017X
Proceedings of the Sixth Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution, Trieste, Italy, 18-22 September 2000
Author : Freeman Dyson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 114 pages
File Size : 31,47 MB
Release : 1999-09-28
Category : Science
ISBN : 1139425765
How did life on earth originate? Did replication or metabolism come first in the history of life? In this book, Freeman Dyson examines these questions and discusses the two main theories that try to explain how naturally occurring chemicals could organize themselves into living creatures. The majority view is that life began with replicating molecules, the precursors of modern genes. The minority belief is that random populations of molecules evolved metabolic activities before exact replication existed. Dyson analyzes both of these theories with reference to recent important discoveries by geologists and chemists. His main aim is to stimulate experiments that could help to decide which theory is correct. This second edition covers the enormous advances that have been made in biology and geology in the past and the impact they have had on our ideas about how life began. It is a clearly-written, fascinating book that will appeal to anyone interested in the origins of life.
Author : Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith
Publisher : CUP Archive
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 41,98 MB
Release : 1986-12-18
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780521324083
This volume is the edited proceedings of a conference seeking to clarify the possible role of clays in the origin of life on Earth. At the heart of the problem of the origin of life lie fundamental questions such as: What kind of properties is a model of a primitive living system required to exhibit and what would its most plausible chemical and molecular makeup be? Answers to these questions have traditionally been sought in terms of properties that are held to be common to all contemporary organisms. However, there are a number of different ideas both on the nature and on the evolutionary priority of 'common vital properties', notably those based on protoplasmic, biochemical and genetic theories of life. This is therefore the first area for consideration in this volume and the contributors then examine to what extent the properties of clay match those required by the substance which acted as the template for life.
Author : Pier Luigi Luisi
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 479 pages
File Size : 44,97 MB
Release : 2016-09-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 1107092396
This fully updated and expanded edition addresses the origins of biological and synthetic life from a systems biology perspective.
