Nick LaneCritiques

I found myself thinking about one of the chapters in this book, years after I had finished the book. But alas, I could remember the basics about muscle fibres but not the name of the book so when I went searching for it in my collection I had difficulties. However, I just re-discovered it and find it still as arresting as i found it the first time around. I'm really impressed with Nick Lane. He's a biochemist with a solid background in research and the current book won him many awards ...in eluding the royal Academy award for Science books in 2010. (Is it already that old?) He uses 10 inventions of evolution to elucidate life as we know it. They are.
1. the origin of life ....a reasonable overview and he seems to come down on the side of white (alkaline) smokers on undersea vents as the likely place where life originated. (I'm not so sure and note that he seems to entirely ignore the work of Cairns-Smith and a possible role for clay minerals as templates).
2. DNA.....which is mainly about routes for the possible evolution of RNA in the alkaline smokers and transformation into DNA. Quite fascinating. Lots to learn here.
3. Photosynthesis....Lane has written a whole book about oxygen so no surprise here that the photosynthesis story is about the role of electrons dropping to low energy levels (releasing energy) and being kicked back up to higher levels by more energy.....releasing oxygen in the process. (I must get his book on oxygen).
4. The complex cell...another masterful description of the biology of the cell ..but with only passing acknowledgement to Lyn Marguli's ideas about chloroplasts and mitochondria being organisms that were absorbed into the cell in a symbiotic relationship.
5. Sex...some interesting statistical stuff here but he makes the point that all eucaryotes: all plants, animals, algae, fungi, protists have sex but not bacteria...and huge numbers of genes were transferred to the cell by the absorption of mitochondria.
6. Movement..it's this chapter that stayed so long with me. The big change that came after the great Permian extinction was motility and motile organisms.....and movement requires muscles...converting chemical energy into mechanical force. Because of their great interest to me, I'll attach some more detailed notes on these chemical/protein mechanisms towards the end of this review.
7. Sight and the evolution of the eye....a beautifully written chapter ...full of interesting insights...like the trilobites use of mineral calcite lenses and in 2001 a living brittlestar was found with calcite lenses on its arms.
8. Hot blood...well I found out there that large animals generate more internal heat and large alligators are technically cold blooded but generate enough heat to be borderline hot-blooded
9. Consciousness...makes the point that the brain has obviously evolved ...so this would imply that "mind" has also evolved ....undermining Pope John Paul's message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that evolution was ok but the mind of man was above all of that (or words to that effect).
10. Death...some interesting observations on extending life spans. Makes the point that most diseases come with old age....postpone the biological old age and you postpone the diseases (and death).
And, as promised above, here are some nuggets that I've extracted from the chapter on movement that I found so fascinating.
"One meticulous study by the geneticists Satoshi Ōta and Naruya Saitou, at the National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, (I’ve walked by it many times....a lovely setting with views of Mt Fuji) Japan, showed that a selection of proteins in the skeletal muscles of mammals are so similar to those in the striated flight muscles of insects that both must have evolved from a common ancestor of vertebrates and invertebrates, living some 600 million years ago.

Jellyfish, it seems, also have striated muscles that are minutely comparable with our own. So both smooth muscle and striated muscle contract using a similar system of actin and myosin, but each system apparently evolved independently from a common ancestor that possessed both cell types - a common ancestor numbering among the earliest of animals, from a time when jellyfish were the acme of creation.

we now know, for example, that the gene sequences of yeast and human actin are 95 per cent identical.' And from this perspective, the evolution of muscle looks very different. The same filaments that power your muscles power the microscopic world of all complex cells. The only real difference lies in their organisation.
A set theme, the motor interactions between myosin and actin, for instance, is varied with the endless imagination of natural selection, to arrive at a breathtaking array of form and function.......
All the traffic of the cell is borne by protein motors that work in a broadly similar manner. First is myosin, which cranks up and down the actin filaments, just as it does in muscle. But here the variations begin. In muscle, the myosin heads spend nine tenths of their time detached from the actin filaments;

How did this great parade of motor proteins come to be? There is nothing that compares with it in the world of bacteria. Nor are actin and myosin the only motoring double-act in eukaryotic cells. A second family of motor proteins, called the kinesins, operates in much the same way as the myosins, in a hand-over-hand manner up and down the sky-wires of the cytoskeleton. In the case of the kinesins, though, the sky-wires in question are not the thin actin wires, but higher-bore tubes, known as microtubules, which are assembled from subunits of another protein called tubulin.

At the detailed level of their gene sequences, the two main types of motor protein, the myosins and the kinesins, have virtually nothing in common......Here and there are points of similarity, but for a long time this was taken to be either chance or a case of convergent evolution. Indeed the kinesins and myosins looked to be a classic case of convergent evolution, where two unrelated types of protein became specialised for a similar task, and so developed similarities in structure, just as the wings of bats and birds evolved independently to converge on similar solutions to the common challenge of flight.

On the basis of crystallography, then, we know that the myosins and kinesins did indeed share a common ancestor, despite having so little in common in gene sequence. Their three-dimensional shapes show many points of folding and structure in common, right down to critical amino acids being preserved in space with the same orientation. This is an astonishing feat of selection: the same patterns, the same shapes, the same spaces, all are preserved on an atomic level for billions of years.....

The shape of all eukaryotic cells, from long and spindly neurons to flat endothelial cells, is maintained by the fibres of the cytoskeleton; and it turns out that much the same is true of bacteria.
For generations, biologists ascribed many bacterial shapes (rods, spirals, crescents, and so on) to the rigid cell wall bounding the cell, so it came as a surprise in the mid-199s to discover that bacteria have a cytoskeleton too. This is composed of thin fibres that look a lot like actin and tubulin...... As with motor proteins, there is little genetic resemblance between the bacterial and eukaryotic proteins.......yet.. The bacterial and eukaryotic protein structures are virtually superimposable, with the same shapes, the same spaces, and a few of the same critical amino acids in the same places. Plainly the eukaryotic cell skeleton evolved from a similar skeleton in bacteria.

In short, the cytoskeleton is motile in its own right. How did such a thing come to be?
Both actin and tubulin filaments are composed of protein subunits that assemble themselves into long chains, or polymers. This ability to polymerise is not unusual; plastics,..... Something similar [spontaneous polymerisation] must have happened in the case of the cytoskeleton proper, long ago. The units of actin and tubulin fibres are derived from ordinary proteins, with other functions about the cell. A few trifling changes in their structure, as happens with the variant haemoglobin, enabled them to assemble spontaneously into filaments. Unlike sickle-cell anaemia, however, this change must have had an immediate benefit.

And so the majesty of motility, from its most elementary beginnings, to the many-splendored power of skeletal muscle, depends on the workings of a handful of proteins, and their endlessly varied forms........ Some intriguing puzzles, when answered, may shine a brighter light. In bacteria, for example, the chromosomes are drawn apart using actin filaments, whereas the tightening that divides cells during replication is achieved with tubulin microtubules. The reverse is true of eukaryotic cells. Here, the scaffold of the spindle, which separates the chromosomes during cell division, is composed of microtubules, while the contracting corset that divides the cell is made of actin. When we know how and why this role reversal took place, we'll certainly have a better understanding of the detailed history of life on earth..... The ancestor of all living eukaryotes was motile. Presumably motility brought with it big advantages"
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All in all, it fulfils some of the promotion quotes on the rear cover, like "If Charles Darwin sprang from his grave, I would give him this fine book to bring him up to speed" and "A science book that doesn't cheat: the structure is logical, the writing is witty, and the hard questions are answered"....I would agree with that. Five stars from me.

Good but, for me, included a bit more physics ,engineering and philosophy and less biology than I had anticipated. I had to work to understand and keep up. Particularly enjoyed the treatment of how the eye is likely to have evolved.

Nick Lane is a biochemist and the first Provost’s Venture Research Fellow at University College London. This book, which the author describes as “grand in scope,” covers much of what is understood about the multidimensional phenomena we call “biological Evolution.”

Lane writes about ten aspects of evolution that he refers to as “inventions.” He clarifies his concept of invention as “the original contrivance or production of a new method or means of doing something, previously unknown; origination, introduction.” He emphasizes that in the case of evolution, these phenomena, all of which embody some form of design, occur naturally without an inventor or intelligent design.

To qualify on his list of seminal events in life’s history, the invention had to meet four criteria. First, the invention had to revolutionize the living world. Second, it had to be of surpassing importance today. Third, it had to be a direct outcome of natural selection rather that, say, cultural evolution. And fourth, it had to be iconic in some way.

This is not easy reading. Lane engages the reader at a fairly sophisticated level.

For example, he first discusses the very origin of life. He debunks the once popular theory that life arose from a “primordial soup” that was energized by lightening for thermodynamic reasons. Instead, he looks to volcanic activity on the sea floor as a source not only of energy but of the chemical building blocks for primitive life through the operation of the so-called Krebs cycle. In his view, the last common ancestor of all life on earth was not a free-living cell “but a rocky labyrinth of mineral cells, lined with catalytic walls composed of iron, sulphur and nickel, and energized by natural proton gradients. The first life was porous rock that generated complex molecules and energy, right up to the formation of proteins and DNA itself.”

Informative and highly recommended.

(JAB)

One can study the biochemistry of photosynthesis in some detail and be unaware of the different pathways that exist and existed in different organisms, of its effect on the color of the sky, of its effect on the structural components of large plants and animals, and of the peculiarities of its evolutionary origin. Nick Lane gives a brilliant overview of the nature, significance and origin of the 10 greatest inventions of evolution including, the origin of life itself, DNA, photosynthesis, the eukaryotes, sex, movement, sight, warm bloodedness (homeothermy), consciousness, and death. I found the degree of detail to fit well with the text's readability and I was uniformly impressed with the author's knowledge and presentation. The relative low point, for me, was the chapter on consciousness. There is a great deal of interest there, but I think I am a little more radical than the author on this topic; he blows off Dennett with a single paragraph and he ends his discussion of the tragic case of a girl with hydranencephaly by stating that if it is the case that if the roots of consciousness are not to be found in the cerebral cortex, "then the neural transform, from firing to feeling, loses some of its mystique". Yes, that's what Dennett says, and it loses all of its mystique.

A very clear explanation of the importance of bioenergetics in the origin of life and the evolution of the eukaryotes, and a detailed discussion of the possible role of endosymbiosis in the evolution of complex organisms, sex, apoptosis and aging. A lot has happened since I learned the Krebs cycle, and just the update, including the extraordinary appearance of ATP synthase, along with the discussion relating biochemistry to evolution makes the book worthwhile. Dr. Lane's imagined trip through a mitochondrion, shrinking us to the size of an ATP molecule, to explain chemiosmotic coupling is inspired.

I've studied biochemistry, evolution, and oncology, but it is just marvelous to have a professor of biochemical evolution who is widely knowledgeable in his field and in the history of its development discuss the relationship of all of these (as well as the origin of life, the possible causes of aging, and the missing hereditability from GWAS studies) with precision and clarity. Additionally, the cost of the book is probably justified by the author's annotated recommendations for further reading by themselves.

This was supposed the illuminate the Krebs cycle and other biochemical pathways, but instead dwelt on the history of discoveries with a focus on British researchers. (*TV Error Buzzer*) Can anyone recommend a book that conveys the dynamics of cellular chemistry at an appropriate mid-level? Thanks.

Way too much chemistry for me! Lane tries valiantly to explain it to non-scientists but only so much is possible. Page after page was incomprehensible. But I liked his writing, he’s very enthusiastic and even tho I couldn’t understand much, some of it did sorta sink in. And in some funny way, I just liked reading through the descriptions of long complicated chemical processes, it had a nice rhythm in a way.

Here’s a fantastic review of the book in the New Yorker - if you’re leery of too much chemistry you might want to read this instead of the book: https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/how-food-powers-your-body-metabolism-...

This was an exciting book and I really enjoyed it. I didn't understand fairly big chunks of the science involved, but it still left me feeling that I understood something about the origin and early evolution of life, a topic I am in awe of.

An amazing explanation of how mitochondria came about making life more complex (eucaryotes and then multicellular organsims), led to sexes, and death. Interesting things to say about the potential for extending lifetimes.

There are two things to take into consideration when approaching this book: target audience and volume of quality content. In my case, one was a con and the other a potential pro.

The author claims this book is for the general public. No, it is not. Even people who love this book admit this is a hard read. An educational background in biochemistry with some understanding of geochemistry and genetics are a remarkable plus. Other than that you need a lot of patience. Despite my moderate knowledge in these fields (low level college), I read this book incredibly slowly for the first third. Eventually I became reluctant to read it at all, so I gave myself permission to skim.

Did I learn a lot? Yes. In fact, it's an incredibly fact dense book, especially if you don't mind the history of all the studies leading to current speculations on oxygen and its influence on life. Much--okay, page per page, it's probably most--of the book is dedicated to fleshing out the research that has theories on oxygen. Most negative reviews focus on this aspect. You can't read this book for it's conclusions, you have to enjoy reading the process.

A part of me would love to come back in a few years after bulking up my biochemistry background so that I can read faster and hold the information instead of letting the thoughts bounce back.

Here's the thing. If I could follow the book better I'd probably give it 4 stars--I truly suspect it'd be that fun and enlightening if it was accessible. However, this is where the mismatch of author intent and execution have to be my priority when deciding how I feel about the book overall. What's the point of great content if it's too disheartening to read because it's a few too many humps of challenges to bother with? No point. I did like what I did learn, but I can't give it any more credit than the 2 stars I'll give it. If I come back, I might rebalance it in consideration of it's value of knowledge as whole versus how much of that whole I grasped as a "general audience" the first time.

A very enjoyable book for one interested in evolutionary biology. I suspect anyone without a recent advanced degree in the field will find much of interest. While there are several kinds of minor annoyances, the book is an easy five stars. It needed one more editor: a hard-headed writing editor, not science editor (so far as this layman with science background can see). The book won the 2010 Royal Society Science Book Prize for popular science writing.

Some criticisms are mystifying. I don't recall exaggeration. Of course there is speculation. It is better called "hypothesis", a mainspring of science. The writer takes care to distinguish hypothesis from fact. Historical science is tricky because it is hard to experiment on history. That scientists have discovered so much of evolutionary history set forth in this book is astounding. There is yet much to learn, and we won't get anywhere without hypotheses.

Perhaps one who dismissed the thermal vent origin of life when the book was published will reconsider, as it is now (2018) generally accepted as the best explanation.

Paleontologists may be said to "bicker" about whether dinosaurs are hot-blooded or cold-blooded, but science proceeds by debate until sufficient facts are discovered to decide an issue. Dinosaurs did dominate the earth for over 125 million years. Their most recent fossils are 66 million years old. It is fortunate that there is enough evidence to start a debate, and evidence there is on either side.

The author rejects dualism and explains his choice of terminology in footnote 2 of Chapter 9. Perhaps some readers have a different edition from mine: Norton, 2010.

The authors addresses and rejects on evidence the telomere shortening theory on lifespan (across species) in footnote 9 of Chapter 10.

The author hardly compares classical music with muscle proteins. He contemplates evolutionary variations on a theme.

Anyone wanting a complete understanding of any of the material would be well advised to find a huge biology book or a series of them.

The last two chapters are necessarily more speculative and not offered as dogma but rather as educated conjecture leavened with available facts.

Please don't try to digest this book in two days without a recent advanced degree in biology. I benefitted by re-studying the first chapters.

Though Lane is more of a scientist than Bill Bryson this book reminded me in many ways of Bryson's wonderful 'A short history of nearly everything'. Lane is an interesting writer and this book tells the oxymoronic tale of Oxygen as both healer and killer, saint and sinner, good guy and villain. There is a distinctly science feel to the text and Lane does not shy away from detailed analysis/presentation of data and theoretical conjecture but the tone is almost always decidedly in awe of life's majesty and at times playful (hence my comparison with Bryson). Oxygen tells a good yarn and it's one that will make you go, at times, 'Wow, who'd have guessed?'

Lane simply “forgot” Margulis’ work?? What the hell?It’s all Martin this and Martin that! Is this what pop-science has come to??

Reading this in 2020 after the "discovery" of Phosphorus on Venus I might add Soviet probes found P2O6 in atmosphere, that oxidation level phosphorus can produce PxHy more or less directly. Then one has to consider things like seasonal variability in atmosphere of Venus (not really orbital seasons, more like solar cycle seasons), something also can act as phosphorus III buffer accumulating it in upper atmosphere and then releasing phosphines periodically making concentration spikes, there's potentially a lot of interesting mechanisms to be aware of. I'm of course super excited for it to be the real biological thing, but phosphines there is a kind of weak biosignature.

During a scientific study carried out in 2019 at the Kidd Mine in Canada an organism was discovered over 2 Km below the surface that breathes sulfur and eats rocks as its regular food source. It joined a growing list of 'extremophiles', microorganisms that live in extreme conditions and suggests to me two likely scenarios. Either the universe is teaming with life of one outrageous kind or another or life is confined to a single, mediocre little planet and is in serious danger of extinction because one particular form of life isn't as smart as it thinks it is.

Only if you do an ostrich act and keep your head in the sand about all the politicians, military personnel, and whistle blowers who have given overwhelming evidence that aliens not only exist but have been captured and their tech reverse engineered to the point where half of what is seen in the skies now is ours, not theirs. Kennedy was assassinated one week after he ordered the spooks to release all the UFO files and collaborate with the Soviets on space tech. He was mentored by James Forestal, the first US defense secretary, who also wanted to release the UFO files. He developed an alleged sudden illness and was cooped up in the top floor of a building and not allowed to see his family. His body was found on the road outside. He allegedly killed himself, like others who wanted the truth out there. There! I can do a Lane act as well, but I’m not bashing anyone (only Lane...lol)!

An interesting book, but this is absolutely not for the newbie. While the descriptions are good and the science is interesting I found myself deep in the world of molecular biology, and no matter how good the writer, that's a place only for those who consider "ribosome" and mitochondria basic terminology.

Overall the book is a little slow, the author has a tendency to drag things out, and while it's interesting and much of it is a new or more indepth for me (BS Biology, DVM, moderately well read on science), it did often read that the author was giving more weight to his beliefs because they were his beliefs (shocker) while tossing outside other ideas still considered widely possible as we wade through life and learn along the way. Definitely not a book to read if you're looking for an unbiased take on what's out there in the field. There is a good references section, etc., so readers can do their own reading.

Overall an interesting book, I learned lots of interesting tidbits, but slow, such that I often skimmed to the next interesting factoid.

This is a nicely written science book for intelligent people. No interviews or fashion commentary. Lane examines the fundamental requirement of life, namely energy. The starts off with examining what life and living is and then takes a look at how (and where) the first cells possibly evolved. Many hypotheses are examined, discarded or elaborated upon. Lane also takes cell evolution further by examining the evolution of complex cells, why most eukaryotes have two different sexes, how cells die, what powers a cell, and a host of other interesting goodies. There is a fair amount of physics, biochemistry and chemistry in this book, along with several illustrations and diagrams. Lane tends to be a bit repetitive, but with a complex subject like this, it probably helps to recap previous points. This is a fascinating book that makes a great addition to his previous book Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life.

This is an extremely interesting and well written book about oxygen - how oxygen spurred the evolution of life, the functioning of oxygen in biological systems, aging, how oxygen relates to everyday life (besides breathing), amongst others. The nice thing about this book is that the author assumes his readers are intelligent and so doesn't simplify his writing or the concepts so much that it practically turns into gibberish.

NOTE: The author's view of junk DNA is a bit dated - the book was published in 2002 and research on junk DNA has advanced since then. Some other information might also be dated, but that is simply how science and science writing work.

OTHER RELATED RECOMMENDED BOOKS:
* The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History by David Beerling
* Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine by Randolph M. Nesse, George C. Williams
* Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future by Peter D. Ward

Very interesting, nicely written book about mitochondria.

Impressive review of the latest ideas on how cells really work, and why energy is vital. The author is a scientist who believes Eukaryotic life is extremely rare in the Universe, that it probably only appeared once on Earth.

While full of rich detail, most people will find it too technical.

An interesting book with a greater focus on the cellular details of evolution and life than I expected. Unfortunately, I found a lot of the specific details to have explanations that either go over my head or just not be explained well enough. I found the level of prior knowledge the author expected to be inconsistent; sometimes very basic things were explained thoroughly (which I don't mind in a popular science book) and some areas that I did not have a prior understand of were never given an explanation. Despite these problems, I expect that a lot of the ideas presented in the book will stick with me and influence my thinking about life and its evolution.

Superbly readable book that delves deep into the structures of life. I have no background in Biology, but with a little bit of re-reading managed to make sense of this treasure trove of information. Fascinating stuff.

The writing is dry or muddled at times, but the subject matter is very interesting. I wish I remembered chemistry and biology better so I could evaluate the likelihood of the suggestions here more critically.

Really well written and although it deals with some fairly complex - for me - concepts and theories, it all hung together. It is also quite chatty in style with some gossipy bits about the scientists involved in the research.The books chapters worked for me - starts with smallest units of life , the cell and finishes with a chapter on the evolutionary importance of death. Whilst there is a little politics hidden away its not a blatant all out attack on creationists or anyone else and that did make a refreshing change from Richard Dawkins [b:The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution|6117055|The Greatest Show on Earth The Evidence for Evolution|Richard Dawkins|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302127919s/6117055.jpg|6295163]continuous digs at ways of thinking other than his own. Possibly my top non-fiction book this year.

What a juggernaut this is. It deals with the latest in the research about the origins of life, and while it once was a question too hard to answer, over the last decade real progress has been made. The question from the title deals with why all complex life is the way it is (including sex & death), and why that differs from bacteria – who evolved for 4 billion years without changing their basic form.

Lane’s book is about his own research, and it is both a thesis and a page turner. I have to admit there were a few pages that went over my head, and some sections were maybe too detailed for my tastes, but the bulk of the book is accessible to the layman, that is if you are willing to put in a serious effort, and have brains enough to recall some of the chemistry from high school. Lane’s prose is smooth and snappy. Instantly one of my favorite non-fiction books, with a broad scope – genetics, biology, chemistry, geology: it’s all relevant to the answers. I’ve read praise saying this is on a Copernican level, but I can’t judge that myself.

I read the original, but I’ve noticed it’s available in Dutch too, with the terrible title 'De Belangrijkste Vraag Van Het Leven'.

Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It

(Rating: 4.0 / 5.0, even)

The twenty to thirty percent of this book that I actually understood was excellent. The Vital Question is a thoughtful, persuasive treatise, full of fascinating proposals like, say, a conjecture that the vibrant plumage of male birds demonstrates mitochondrial health to female birds (as most pigments are synthesized in the mitochondria). Nick Lane outlines an emerging theory about the origins of the eukaryotic cell, leading us through a history of the field's ideas (cellular biology’s "oxphos wars" were a highlight), uprooting some established doctrines while defending and expanding on others. Unfortunately, even if I'm not the book’s intended audience, the amount of time I spent thumbing back and forth between the book and its glossary in an attempt to parse any given sentence is a clue that the writing could have been clearer – my willingness to do so, however, speaks to the ultimate success of this book. Undoubtedly, I'll read more Nick Lane, but I'll likely do so with a calorie-dense jar of peanut butter handy to sustain my own vitality.