{"id":373,"date":"2015-05-12T16:58:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T16:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshmitteldorf.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=373"},"modified":"2015-05-12T20:43:19","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T20:43:19","slug":"vital-questions-a-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2015\/05\/12\/vital-questions-a-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Vital Questions \u2014 A Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vital Question<\/a>, by Nick Lane, 352 pp, Profile Books, April, 2015<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Life has been on earth about 4 billion years. \u00a0If we think of each billion as a term at college, then for its Freshman, Sophomore and Junior years, life majored in chemistry. \u00a0Every possible chemical environment was probed, drawing its first energy from the warm, hydrothermal vents<\/a> at the bottom of the ocean, leaving the alkaline silos where life got its start, colonizing the sea and the land, the atmosphere, places cold and hot, wet and dry, acid and base, high in the clouds and deep in rock miles under the earth.<\/p>\n

Life as an underclassman was just one cell at a time, and a small cell at that, maybe a micron across, a \u201cprokaryote\u201d that despite its impressive chemical virtuosity had little physical structure and the simplest life cycle. \u00a0Divide and conquer.<\/p>\n

Before his Sophomore year was over, the precocious chemists had figured out how to use the sun\u2019s energy to pull carbon right out of the air, and the entire atmosphere had been processed, molecule by molecule, from (inert) CO2<\/sub> to (energy-laden) Oxygen. \u00a0The energy economy of the earth was transformed.<\/p>\n

Then, about a billion years ago\u2014life was a rising Senior\u2014a once-in-a-lifetime event occurred, a wild fluke. \u00a0One of these chemists that specialized in membranes and electrochemistry was invaded and colonized by a parasite that specialized in combustion chemistry\u2014oxidation of sugar, to be specific. \u00a0The invader put all that atmospheric oxygen to good use, then spewed out toxic ROS (reactive oxygen species) that almost killed the host, as it had killed many archaeons before. \u00a0But this time, the host survived and, over an amazingly short time of just 2 million years, learned not just how to coexist with the invader, but also to domesticate the parasite and put him to work. \u00a0The host was already using ATP as an energy source, and the parasite had a talent for producing copious quantities of ATP\/energy\u2014more than any archaeon had ever seen before. \u00a0Stick with me, kid and we\u2019ll go far. \u00a0By the end of Senior year, every plant and animal on earth, every fungus and amoeba, toadstool, jellyfish and (by the way) you and me\u2014every cell in our bodies, all of them are descended from that one sick, infected \u201chopeful monster<\/a>\u201d. \u00a0Her name was LECA, the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor. \u00a0Everything we think of as macroscopic biology comprises her progeny, in so many different guises.<\/p>\n

Because it was in its Senior year that life first got interested in engineering, cell upon cell. \u00a0Pipelines and networks of roadways, electrical circuits, information processing within and between cells. Muscles, bones, shells, levers, motors and other mechanical devices that were made out of living cells! \u00a0Locomotion in the sea, on land and air. \u00a0The greening of earth and sea, predators and prey, webs of interconnected life\u2014all of this is the realm of eukaryotes.<\/p>\n

\n

This story wasn\u2019t written by Nick Lane, but he certainly tells it with a flare. \u00a0The story was written by biological visionaries of the last century. \u00a0Richard Goldschmidt<\/a>, Francis Crick<\/a>, Lynn Margulis<\/a>, Carl Woese<\/a> are biologists that I know. \u00a0Also Stephen Jay Gould<\/a> and E. O. Wilson<\/a>\u2014I\u2019m sure there are others who are equally eminent with whom I am unfamiliar. \u00a0Erwin Schroedinger<\/a> and Freeman Dyson<\/a> were physicists who also contributed to the canon, speculating about the Great Questions.<\/p>\n

In our generation, Nick Lane is the only one I know who is making a bid as heir to these giants. \u00a0(I hope that readers of this column will use the comments section to make me aware of others.) \u00a0He is a biological visionary who happens to be a great storyteller. \u00a0In a series of books since 2005<\/a>, he is asking the Great Questions about life, how it began, why it is the way it is, how much of life\u2019s history is pure chance, and if we should run into an extraterrestrial life form, how much can we expect it to be like us? \u00a0His latest book is called The Vital Question<\/a>. \u00a0Like his previous books, this one takes a bioenergetic view of life. The centerpiece of the present volume is that singular event at the beginning of Senior year: \u00a0The fusion of (probably) several bacterial and archaeon individuals to form that one \u201chopeful monster\u201d, the mother of us all.<\/p>\n

Among the traits that all eukaryotes have in common (but distinct from prokaryotes) are<\/p>\n