The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere
Eric Smith and Harold Morowitz
Published 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1107121881
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: Uniting the conceptual foundations of the physical sciences and biology, this groundbreaking multidisciplinary book explores the origin of life as a planetary process. Combining geology, geochemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, evolution and statistical physics to create an inclusive picture of the living state, the authors develop the argument that the emergence of life was a necessary cascade of non-equilibrium phase transitions that opened new channels for chemical energy flow on Earth. This full color and logically structured book introduces the main areas of significance and provides a well-ordered and accessible introduction to multiple literatures outside the confines of disciplinary specializations, as well as including an extensive bibliography to provide context and further reading. For researchers, professionals entering the field or specialists looking for a coherent overview, this text brings together diverse perspectives to form a unified picture of the origin of life and the ongoing organization of the biosphere.
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
Nick Lane
Published 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0393352979
Publisher W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
Publisher’s synopsis: 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 Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
For two and a half billion years, from the very origins of life, single-celled organisms such as bacteria evolved without changing their basic form. Then, on just one occasion in four billion years, they made the jump to complexity. All complex life, from mushrooms to man, shares puzzling features, such as sex, which are unknown in bacteria. How and why did this radical transformation happen?
The answer, Lane argues, lies in energy: all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a lightning bolt. Building on the pillars of evolutionary theory, Lane’s hypothesis draws on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and cell biology, in order to deliver a compelling account of evolution from the very origins of life to the emergence of multicellular organisms.
What is Life?: How Chemistry Becomes Biology
Addy Pross
Published 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0198784791
Publisher Oxford University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behavior which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology? What could have led the first replicating molecules up such a path? Now, developments in the emerging field of ‘systems chemistry’ are unlocking the problem. Addy Pross shows how the different kind of stability that operates among replicating molecules results in a tendency for chemical systems to become more complex and acquire the properties of life. Strikingly, he demonstrates that Darwinian evolution is the biological expression of a deeper, well-defined chemical concept: the whole story from replicating molecules to complex life is one continuous process governed by an underlying physical principle.
First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began
David Deamer
Publication Date: September 1, 2012
ISBN-10: 0520274458
Publisher: University of California Press
Publisher’s synopsis: This pathbreaking book explores how life can begin, taking us from cosmic clouds of stardust, to volcanoes on Earth, to the modern chemistry laboratory. Seeking to understand life’s connection to the stars, David Deamer introduces astrobiology, a new scientific discipline that studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and relates it to the birth and death of stars, planet formation, interfaces between minerals, water, and atmosphere, and the physics and chemistry of carbon compounds. Deamer argues that life began as systems of molecules that assembled into membrane-bound packages. These in turn provided an essential compartment in which more complex molecules assumed new functions required for the origin of life and the beginning of evolution. Deamer takes us from the vivid and unpromising chaos of the Earth four billion years ago up to the present and his own laboratory, where he contemplates the prospects for generating synthetic life. Engaging and accessible, First Life describes the scientific story of astrobiology while presenting a fascinating hypothesis to explain the origin of life.
Abiogenesis: How Life Began. The Origins and Search for Life
Michael Russell (Editor)
Publication Date: August 3, 2011
Publisher: Cosmology Science Publishers
Publisher’s synopsis: What is the origin of life? How did life begin? Is there life on other planets? Are we alone? These are questions which have been asked for thousands of years. In this ground-breaking, revolutionary text, over 40 top scientists from around the world, provide the answers in 28 paradigm busting chapters. The first steps toward life began in a state of disequilibrium whereas the chemicals for life came from the stars and were churned together in deep sea thermal vents. Viruses may have served as mobile RNA worlds, injecting the necessary genetic elements into proto-cells thereby fashioning the first living cell. Some scientists have championed the belief that life on Earth came from other planets. Even if that were the case, this simply moves the question of life’s origins elsewhere but does not explain the ultimate question. Be it on Earth or some other world, life had to begin via processes known as abiogenesis Obviously, there must have been an evolutionary progression beginning with simple chemical compounds to proto-life, then to DNA-equipped life capable of replicating itself. As detailed in this text, those prebiological evolutionary steps may have taken place in submarine alkaline hydrothermal vents and required various chemical interactions and divisions involving amino acids, polyphosphate-peptide synergy, the creating of biosynthetic pathways and the emergence of sparse metabolic network, and the assembly of pre-genetic information by primordial cells, with some championing compartmentalizaton, others, vesicles, and all this leading to an RNA world in which viruses and retroviruses played an important part. The origin of life and evolution of prokaryotes was not a matter of chance, but deterministic, probable and necessary and that these bioenergetic principles are likely to apply throughout the universe and on planets and moon in our own solar system, including Mars, Titan, and Europa. Some life forms may be based on arsenic, silicon, sulfur, and ammonia. Others may dwell deep beneath the surface of water worlds which are common in the universe. Some may have evolved on planets like our own. This means: life is everywhere, and, we are not alone.
The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology
Pier Luigi Luisi
Publication Date: August 26, 2010
ISBN-10: 0521528011
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: The origin of life from inanimate matter has been the focus of much research for decades, both experimentally and philosophically. Luisi takes the reader through the consecutive stages from prebiotic chemistry to synthetic biology, uniquely combining both approaches. This book presents a systematic course discussing the successive stages of self-organisation, emergence, self-replication, autopoiesis, synthetic compartments and construction of cellular models, in order to demonstrate the spontaneous increase in complexity from inanimate matter to the first cellular life forms. A chapter is dedicated to each of these steps, using a number of synthetic and biological examples. With end-of-chapter review questions to aid reader comprehension, this book will appeal to graduate students and academics researching the origin of life and related areas such as evolutionary biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and natural sciences.
Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints (Advances in Astrobiology and Biogeophysics)
Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Louis Neal Irwin
Publication Date: November 17, 2008
ISBN-10: 3540768165
Publisher: Springer
Publisher’s synopsis: Energy, chemistry, solvents, and habitats — the basic elements of living systems – define the opportunities and limitations for life on other worlds. This class-tested text examines each of these parameters in crucial depth and makes the argument that life forms we would recognize may be more common in our solar system than many assume. It also considers, however, exotic forms of life that would not have to rely on carbon as basic chemical element, solar energy as a main energy source, or water as primary solvent. Finally the question of detecting bio- and geosignature of such life forms is discussed, ranging from Earth environments to deep space. While speculative considerations in this emerging field of science cannot be avoided, the authors have tried to present their study with the breadth and seriousness that a scientific approach to this issue requires. They seek an operational definition of life and investigate the realm of possibilities that nature offers to realize this very special state of matter and avoid scientific jargon wherever possible to make this intrinsically interdisciplinary subject understandable to a broad range of readers.
Protocells: Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter
Steen Rasmussen, Mark A. Bedau, Liaohai Chen, David Deamer, David C. Krakauer, Norman H. Packard, Peter F. Stadler (Editors)
Publication Date: November 7, 2008
ISBN-10: 0262182688
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publisher’s synopsis: Protocells offers a comprehensive resource on current attempts to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. These minimal versions of cells, known as protocells, are entities with lifelike properties created from nonliving materials, and the book provides in-depth investigations of processes at the interface between nonliving and living matter. Chapters by experts in the field put this state-of-the-art research in the context of theory, laboratory work, and computer simulations on the components and properties of protocells. The book also provides perspectives on research in related areas and such broader societal issues as commercial applications and ethical considerations. The book covers all major scientific approaches to creating minimal life, both in the laboratory and in simulation. It emphasizes the bottom-up view of physicists, chemists, and material scientists but also includes the molecular biologists’ top-down approach and the origin-of-life perspective. The capacity to engineer living technology could have an enormous socioeconomic impact and could bring both good and ill. Protocells promises to be the essential reference for research on bottom-up assembly of life and living technology for years to come. It is written to be both resource and inspiration for scientists working in this exciting and important field and a definitive text for the interested layman.
Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life
Horst Rauchfuss
Published 2008
ISBN-13: 978-3540788225
Published by Springer Verlag
Publisher’s synopsis: 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.
Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology
Woodruff T. Sullivan III and John Baross (Editors)
Publication Date: September 24, 2007
ISBN-10: 0521531020
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: Astrobiology involves the study of the origin and history of life on Earth, planets and moons where life may have arisen, and the search for extraterrestrial life. It combines the sciences of biology, chemistry, palaeontology, geology, planetary physics and astronomy. This textbook brings together world experts in each of these disciplines to provide the most comprehensive coverage of the field currently available. Topics cover the origin and evolution of life on Earth, the geological, physical and chemical conditions in which life might arise and the detection of extraterrestrial life on other planets and moons. The book also covers the history of our ideas on extraterrestrial life and the origin of life, as well as the ethical, philosophical and educational issues raised by astrobiology. Written to be accessible to students from diverse backgrounds, this text will be welcomed by advanced undergraduates and graduates who are taking astrobiology courses.
Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin
Robert Hazen
Published 2005
Publisher National Academies Press
Publisher’s synopsis: A book from a leading expert on the connection between minerals and the origin of life.
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of life’s origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet. Astrobiologist Robert Hazen has spent many years dealing with the fundamental questions of life’s genesis. As an active research scientist, he is down deep in all the messy details that science has to offer on the subject, tracing the inexorable sequence of events that led to the complicated interactions of carbon-based molecules. As he takes us through the astounding process of emergence, we are witness to the first tentative steps toward life—from the unfathomable abundance of carbon biomolecules synthesized in the black vacuum of space to the surface of the Earth to deep within our planet’s restless crust.
Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis
Harold J. Morowitz
Publication Date: August 11, 2004
ISBN-10: 0300102100
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: In this book an internationally renowned scientist presents a radically new theory of the origin of life on Earth 4 billion years ago.
Harold J. Morowitz postulates that the first step toward the origin of life was the spontaneous condensation of amphiphilic molecules to form vesicles (or protocells). This hypothesis provides a framework for reexamining the emergence of cellularity. Morowitz further proposes that core metabolic processes have not changed for some 3.8 billion years, so we can use a study of modern biochemistry to advance our knowledge about the chemical processes of the earliest protocells. Morowitz views origin of life issues from the perspective of certain constructs in the philosophy of science that provide guideposts to formulating and assessing hypotheses. This book presents a unique discussion among origin-of-life books on the relation between science and epistemology on the difficult problem of learning about the very distant past.
Life’s Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution
J. William Schopf (Editor)
Publication Date: October 7, 2002
ISBN-10: 0520233913
Publisher: University of California Press
Publisher’s synopsis: Always a controversial and compelling topic, the origin of life on Earth was considered taboo as an area of inquiry for science as recently as the 1950s. Since then, however, scientists working in this area have made remarkable progress, and an overall picture of how life emerged is coming more clearly into focus. We now know, for example, that the story of life’s origin begins not on Earth, but in the interiors of distant stars. This book brings a summary of current research and ideas on life’s origin to a wide audience. The contributors, all of whom received the Oparin/Urey Gold Medal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, are luminaries in the fields of chemistry, paleobiology, and astrobiology, and in these chapters they discuss their life’s work: understanding the what, when, and how of the early evolution of life on Earth. Presented in nontechnical language and including a useful glossary of scientific terms, Life’s Origin gives a state-of-the-art encapsulation of the fascinating work now being done by scientists as they begin to characterize life as a natural outcome of the evolution of cosmic matter.
The Spark Of Life: Darwin And The Primeval Soup
Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada
Publication Date: March 8, 2001
ISBN-10: 0738204935
Publisher: Basic Books
Publisher’s synopsis: “A highly readable survey of the historical prelude to the study of the origins of life, as well as selected areas of current research, including the search for extraterrestrial life.”-Nature Where did we come from? Did life arise on earth or on some other planet? What did the earliest primitive organisms look like? Untangling a century of contentious debate, the authors explore current theories of the source of life-from Martian meteors to hydrothermal vents-and then present their own elegant scenario: Life arose not in the subterranean depths, as many believe, but on Earth’s tumultuous surface, where a primitive form of natural selection spawned the first genetic material, perhaps in the form of a proto-virus. Knowing exactly how life began on Earth will not only teach us more about ourselves, it will bring us closer to finding life elsewhere.
The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language
John Maynard Smith, Eörs Szathmáry
Publication Date: November 26, 2000
ISBN-10: 019286209X
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: When John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry published The Major Transitions in Evolution, it was seen as a major work in biology. Nature hailed it as a book of “grand and daunting sweep…A splendid and rewarding tour de force.” And New Scientist wrote that it captured “the essence of modern biology,” calling it “an extremely significant book which, as a bonus, is very readable.” Now, in The Origins of Life, Maynard Smith and Szathmáry have completely rewritten Transitions to bring their ideas to a wider audience of general readers. Here is a brilliant, original picture of how life evolved on earth, focusing primarily on six major transitions dramatic breakthroughs in the way that information was passed between generations. The authors offer illuminating explorations of the origin of life itself, the arrival of the first cells with nuclei, the first reproduction by sexual means, the appearance of multicellular plants and animals, the emergence of cooperative animal societies, and the birth of language.
The Origins of Life represents the thinking of two leading scientists on questions that engage us all how life began and how it gradually evolved from tiny invisible cells into whales and trees and human beings.
The Fifth Miracle: The Search for The Origin and Meaning of Life
Paul Davies
Publication date: March 16, 2000
ISBN-10: 068486309X
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publisher’s synopsis: Are We Alone in the Universe?
In this provocative and far-reaching book, internationally acclaimed physicist and writer Paul Davies confronts one of science’s great outstanding mysteries — the origin of life.
Three and a half billion years ago, Mars resembled earth. It was warm and wet and could have supported primitive organisms. If life once existed on Mars, might it have originated there and traveled to earth inside meteorites blasted into space by cosmic impacts?
Davies builds on recent scientific discoveries and theories to address larger questions of existence: What, exactly, is life? Is it the inevitable by-product of physical laws, as many scientists maintain, or an almost miraculous accident? Are we alone in the universe, or will life emerge on all earthlike planets? And if there is life elsewhere in the universe, is it preordained to evolve toward greater complexity and intelligence?
Through his search for answers to these questions, Davies explores the ultimate mystery of mankind’s existence — who we are and what our place might be in the unfolding drama of the cosmos.
Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview
Iris Fry
Publication Date: February 1, 2000
ISBN-10: 0813527406
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: How did life emerge on Earth? Is there life on other worlds? These questions, until recently confined to the pages of speculative essays and tabloid headlines, are now the subject of legitimate scientific research. This book presents a unique perspective-a combined historical, scientific, and philosophical analysis, which does justice to the complex nature of the subject.
The book’s first part offers an overview of the main ideas on the origin of life as they developed from antiquity until the twentieth century. The second, more detailed part of the book examines contemporary theories and major debates within the origin-of-life scientific community.
Topics include: – Aristotle and the Greek atomists’ conceptions of the organism – Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane’s 1920s breakthrough papers – Possible life on Mars? – The search for extraterrestrial intelligence – Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets
Origins of Life, Second Edition: On Earth and in the Cosmos
Geoffrey Zubay
Publication Date: January 18, 2000
ISBN-10: 012781910X
Publisher: Academic Press
Publisher’s synopsis: Origins of Life on the Earth and in the Cosmos suggests answers to the age-old questions of how life on the earth and how it might arise elsewhere. This thorough revision of a successful First Edition describes the key events in the evolution of living systems, starting with the creation of an environment suitable for the origins of life. Whereas we may never be able to reconstruct the precise pathway that led to the origin of life on earth, we can make some plausible reconstructions of how it took place. Such exercises have greatly expanded out understanding of the principles of chemical evolution and how they compare and contrast with the principles of biological evolution.
Key Features
* Provides an excellent review of basic biochemistry an evolution
* Written in a clear, concise style for scientists, students, and readers interested in a scientific inquiry into the origins of life
* Written by an authority in the field, and brought fully up-to-date in light of new research
* Pulls together valuable information not found in a single source
* Organized and presented in a manner conductive for use in a college course
* Heavily illustrated to make difficult concepts concrete
Origins of Life
Freeman Dyson
Publication Date: September 28, 1999
ISBN-10: 0521626684
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: How did life on Earth originate? Did replication or metabolism come first in the history of life? In the second edition of the acclaimed Origins of Life, distinguished scientist and science writer 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 and that natural selection drove the evolution of cells toward greater complexity for a long time without the benefit of genes. Dyson analyzes both of these theories with reference to recent important discoveries by geologists and chemists, aiming to stimulate new experiments that could help decide which theory is correct. This second edition covers the impact revolutionary discoveries such as the existence of ribozymes, enzymes made of RNA; the likelihood that many of the most ancient creatures are thermophilic, living in hot environments; and evidence of life in the most ancient of all terrestrial rocks in Greenland 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.
Seven Clues to the Origin of Life: A Scientific Detective Story
A. G. Cairns-Smith
Publication Date: November 30, 1990
ISBN-10: 0521398282
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: This book addresses the question of how life may have arisen on earth, in the spirit of an intriguing detective story. It relies on the methods of Sherlock Holmes, in particular his principle that one should use the most paradoxical features of a case to crack it. This approach to the essential biological problems is not merely light-hearted, but a fascinating scrutiny of some very fundamental questions. ‘I know of no other book that succeeds as well as this one in maintaining the central question in focus throughout. It is a summary of the best evolutionary thinking as applied to the origins of life in which the important issues are addressed pertinently, economically and with a happy recourse to creative analogies.’ Nature ‘… a splendid story – and a much more convincing one than the molecular biologists can offer as an alternative. Cairns-Smith has argued his case before in the technical scientific literature, here he sets it out in a way from which anyone – even those whose chemistry and biology stopped at sixteen – can learn.’
What is Life?
Erwin Schrodinger
Publication date 1944
ISBN 0-521-42708-8
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Publisher’s synopsis: (2012 edition) Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger’s What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. It was written for the layman, but proved to be one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA. What is Life? appears here together with Mind and Matter, his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Brought together with these two classics are Schrödinger’s autobiographical sketches, which offer a fascinating account of his life as a background to his scientific writings.