70 Nick Lane Quotes on Power, The Vital Question: Energy and Bacteria - Quotes.pub

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Every day in the human body, some 10 billion cells die and are replaced by new cells. The cells that die do not meet a violent unpremeditated end, but are removed silently and unnoticed by apoptosis, all evidence of their demise eaten by neighbouring cells. This means that apoptosis balances cell division.

I shall argue that the distinction between a ‘living planet’ – one that is geologically active – and a living cell is only a matter of definition. There is no hard and fast dividing line. Geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry. From this point of view, the fact that we can’t distinguish between geology and biology in these old rocks is fitting. Here is a living planet giving rise to life, and the two can’t be separated without splitting a continuum. Move.

But whatever our beliefs, this richness of understanding should be a cause for marvel and celebration.

Your 40 trillion cells contain at least a quadrillion mitochondria, with a combined convoluted surface area of about 14,000 square metres; about four football fields.

In the end, respiration and burning are equivalent; the slight delay in the middle is what we know as life.

I will argue that energy has constrained the evolution of life on earth; that the same forces ought to apply elsewhere in the universe; and that a synthesis of energy and evolution could be the basis for a more predictive biology, helping us understand why life is the way it is, not only on earth, but wherever it might exist in the universe.

When a molecule of vitamin C encounters a free radical, it becomes oxidised and thereby renders the free radical innocuous. The oxidised vitamin C then gets restored to its non-oxidised state by an enzyme called vitamin C reductase. It is like a boxer who goes into the ring, takes a hit to his jaw, goes to his corner to recover, and then does it all over again.

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer, it just seems longer.’1.

The myosin in our own skeletal muscles is more closely related to the myosin driving the flight muscles of that irritating housefly buzzing around your head than it is to the myosin in the muscles of your own sphincters.

Hermaphroditic species such as flatworms go to bizarre lengths to avoid being inseminated, fighting pitched battles with their penises, their semen burning gaping holes in the vanquished. This is lively natural history, but it is circular as an argument, as it takes for granted that there are greater biological costs to being female.

Radical feminists and evolutionists agree that males are a serious cost to society.

Occam’s razor, the philosophical basis of all science: assume the simplest natural cause. That answer might turn out not to be correct, but we should not resort to more complex reasoning unless it is shown to be necessary.

Energy and life go hand in hand. If you stop breathing, you will not be able to generate the energy you need for staying alive and you’ll be dead in a few minutes. Keep breathing. Now the oxygen in your breath is being transported to virtually every one of the 15 trillion cells in your body, where it is used to burn glucose in cellular respiration. You are a fantastically energetic machine. Gram per gram, even when sitting comfortably, you are converting 10 000 times more energy than the sun every second.

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Much of our internal heat is generated by dissipating the proton gradient across the mitochondrial membranes (see page 183). Since the proton gradient can either power ATP production or heat production, we are faced with alternatives: any protons dissipated to produce heat cannot be used to make ATP. (As we saw in Part 2, the proton gradient has other critical functions too, but if we assume that these remain constant, they don’t affect our argument.) If 30 per cent of the proton gradient is used to produce heat, then no more than 70 per cent can be used to produce ATP. Wallace and colleagues realized that this balance could plausibly shift according to the climate. People living in tropical Africa would gain from a tight coupling of protons to ATP production, so generating less internal heat in a hot climate, whereas the Inuit, say, would gain by generating more internal heat in their frigid environment, and so would necessarily generate relatively little ATP. To compensate for their lower ATP production, they would need to eat more. Wallace set out to find any mitochondrial genes that might influence the balance between heat production and ATP generation, and found several variants that plausibly affected heat production (by uncoupling electron flow from proton pumping). The variants that produced the most heat were favoured in the Arctic, as expected, while those that produced the least were found in Africa.

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Thermodynamics is one of those words best avoided in a book with any pretence to be popular, but it is more engaging if seen for what it is: the science of 'desire'. The existence of atoms and molecules is dominated by 'attractions', 'repulsions', 'wants' and 'discharges', to the point that it becomes virtually impossible to write about chemistry without giving in to some sort of randy anthromorphism. Molecules 'want' to lose or gain electrons; attract opposite charges; repulse similar charges; or cohabit with molecules of similar character. A chemical reaction happens spontaneously if all the molecular partners desire to participate; or they can be pressed to react unwillingly through greater force. And of course some molecules really want to react but find it hard to overcome their innate shyness. A little gentle flirtation might prompt a massive release of lust, a discharge of pure energy. But perhaps I should stop there.

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Storing genes, vulnerable informational systems, in the immediate vicinity of the mitochondrial respiratory chains, which leak destructive free radicals, is equivalent to storing a valuable library in the wooden shack of a registered pyromaniac.

of oxygen, whether we think of it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, is the formation of free radicals. As conventionally stated, the idea that breathing oxygen causes ageing is disarmingly simple. We produce free

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Horvitz and his colleagues discovered several genes that coded for the effectors of cell death in nematodes—the death genes. Their findings were fascinating in their own right, but by far the most unexpected and important discovery was that there were exact equivalents of the death genes in flies, mammals, and even plants. Cancer researchers had already identified some of these genes at the time, but why or how they were involved in cancer was still unknown. The link with nematodes made their function clear, while giving another demonstration of the fundamental unity of life. Not only were the human genes unambiguously related to the nematode genes, but also they could even be genetically engineered to replace the nematode genes in the worms themselves, where they worked equally well! Mutations that disabled any of the death genes prevented the nematodes from losing their 131 cells by apoptosis as usual. The implications for cancer were plain: if the same mutations had a similar effect in people, then incipient cancer cells would likewise fail to commit suicide, and would instead continue to proliferate to form a tumour.

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multicellular life. All animals, all plants, all of them depend on

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

As a rule of thumb, the hermaphrodite lifestyle works well if the prospects of finding a mate are slim, for example in low-density or immobile populations (explaining why many plants are hermaphrodites), while separate sexes develop in species with higher population densities or greater mobility.

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Petty human squabbles over borders and oil and creed vanish in the knowledge that this living marble surrounded by infinite emptiness is our shared home, and more, a home we share with, and owe to, the most wonderful inventions of life.

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Pseudobiceros bedfordi, which engages in a sperm battle when mating. Each is equipped with two penises, with which they fence, attempting to smear sperm onto the other without being fertilized themselves. The ejaculate burns a hole in the skin of the recipient, which is sometimes cavernous enough to cause the loser to tear in half. The problem is that the flatworms all want to be male. The female, almost by definition, invests more of her resources in the offspring, which means that individuals pass on more of their genes if they succeed in fertilizing others, while avoiding being fertilized themselves. This equates to spraying sperm around liberally without becoming pregnant.

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With these new techniques, a new breed of evolutionist is emerging, able to capture the workings of evolution in real time. The picture so painted is breathtaking in its wealth of detail and its compass, ranging from the subatomic to the planetary scale. And that is why I said that, for the first time in history, we know. Much of our growing body of knowledge is provisional, to be sure, but it is vibrant and meaningful. It is a joy to be alive at this time, when we know so much, and yet can still look forward to so much more.

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

Mitochondrial genes act like a female surname, which enables us to trace our ancestry down the female line in the way some families try to trace their descent down the male line from William the Conqueror, or Noah, or Mohammed.

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A piece of bad news wrapped in a protein coat.

Without programmed cell death, the bonds that bind cells in complex multicellular organisms might never have evolved.

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Men are even worse: a hundred rounds of cell division are needed to make sperm, with each round linked inexorably to more mutations. Because sperm production goes on throughout life, round after round of cell division, the older the man, the worse it gets. As the geneticist James Crow put it, the greatest mutational health hazard in the population is fertile old men.

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The myosin in our own skeletal muscles is more closely related to the myosin driving the flight muscles of that irritating housefly buzzing around your head than it is to the myosin in the muscles of your own sphincters

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this chapter is different from the other chapters in this book, in that not only does science not (yet) know the answer, but at present we can barely conceive of how that answer might look in terms of the known laws of physics or biology or information.

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

For that matter, how do we switch from simple chemical affiliations to selection for proteins? And how do we get from RNA to DNA? As it happens, there are some striking answers, backed up by surprising findings in the last few years. Gratifyingly, the new findings square beautifully with the idea of life evolving in hydrothermal vents, the setting of Chapter 1.

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

the igneo-aerial food.” In other words, despite

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To doubt that life evolved, even if some of the details described in this book may yet prove wrong, is to doubt the convergence of evidence, from molecules to men, from bacteria to planetary systems. It is to doubt the evidence of biology, and its concordance with physics and chemistry, geology and astronomy. It is to doubt the veracity of experiment and observation, to doubt the testing in reality. It is, in the end, to doubt reality.

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer, it just seems longer.’1

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

We know a great deal about the molecular mechanisms of evolution and about the history of life on our planet, but far less about which parts of this history are chance – trajectories that could have played out quite differently on other planets – and which bits are dictated by physical laws or constraints.

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Geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry.

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Listeria...secretes two or three proteins that together hijack the host cell's cytoskeleton. As a result, the bacteria motor around the inside of the infected cell, pushed by an actin 'comet tail' that associates and dissociates behind them.

The story of evolution is more dramatic, more compelling, more intricate than any creation myth. Yet like any creation myth, it is a tale of transformations, of sudden and spectacular changes, eruptions of innovation that transfigured our planet, overwriting past revolutions with new layers of complexity. The tranquil beauty of our planet from space belies the real history of this place, full of strife and ingenuity and change. How ironic that our own petty squabbles reflect our planet's turbulent past, and that we alone, despoilers of the Earth, can rise above it to see the beautiful unity of the whole.

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Our terminal decline into old age and death stems from the fine print of the contract that we signed with our mitochondria two billion years ago.

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The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.

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establishment. In 1966, the Dutch geologist M. G. Rutten could write, in a charmingly antiquated style that has passed forever from the scientific journals:

Oxygen: The molecule that made the world Quotes

Timmis and colleagues found that chloroplast genes are transferred to the nucleus at a rate of about 1 transfer in every 16 000 seeds in the tobacco plant Nicotiana tabacum. This may not sound impressive, but a single tobacco plant produces as many as a million seeds in a single year, which adds up to more than 60 seeds in which at least one chloroplast gene has been transferred to the nucleus—in every plant, in every generation.

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This second type of vent is not volcanic, and there’s no magma involved. Instead, it depends on the reaction of these freshly exposed rocks with seawater. Water doesn’t just percolate into such rocks: it physically reacts with them; it is incorporated into them, altering their structure to form hydroxide minerals like serpentine (named after its resemblance to the mottled green scales of a serpent). The reaction with seawater expands the rock, causing it to crack and fracture, which in turn permits further seawater to penetrate, perpetuating the process. The scale of such reactions is astonishing. The volume of water bound into rock in this way is believed to equal the volume of the oceans themselves. As

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

Matters came to a head after 1918, when the French scientist Paul Portier published his rhetorical masterpiece Les Symbiotes. He was nothing if not bold, claiming that: ‘All living beings, all animals from Amoeba to Man, all plants from Cryptogams to Dicotyledons are constituted by an association, the emboîtement of two different beings. Each living cell contains in its protoplasm formations, which histologists designate by the name of mitochondria. These organelles are, for me, nothing other than symbiotic bacteria, which I call symbiotes.

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Core consciousness operates in the present, rebuilding itself moment by moment, mapping out how the self is altered by external objects, draping perceptions with feelings. Extended consciousness uses the same mechanisms, but now binds memories and language into each moment of core consciousness, qualifying emotional meaning with autobiographical past, labelling feelings and objects with words, and so on. Thus extended consciousness builds on emotional meaning, integrating memory, language, past and future, into the here and now of core consciousness. The selfsame neural handshaking mechanisms allow a vast expansion of parallel circuitry to be bound back into a single moment of perception.

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but mammals have at their disposal ten times the resources, they

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Quotes

Pigments such as haemoglobin are coloured because they absorb light of particular colours (bands of light, as in a rainbow) and reflect back light of other colours. The pattern of light absorbed by a compound is known as its absorption spectrum. When binding oxygen, haemoglobin absorbs light in the blue-green and yellow parts of the spectrum, but reflects back red light, and this is the reason why we perceive arterial blood as a vivid red colour. The absorption spectrum changes when oxygen dissociates from haemoglobin in venous blood. Deoxyhaemoglobin absorbs light across the green part of the spectrum, and reflects back red and blue light. This gives venous blood its purple colour.

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Ribosomes have an error rate of about one letter in 10,000, far lower than the defect rate in our own high-quality manufacturing processes. And they operate at a rate of about 10 amino acids per second, building whole proteins with chains comprising hundreds of amino acids in less than a minute.

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Metabolically active cells, such as those of the liver, kidneys, muscles, and brain, have hundreds or thousands of mitochondria, making up some 40 per cent of the cytoplasm. The egg cell, or oocyte, is exceptional: it passes on around 100000 mitochondria to the next generation. In contrast, blood cells and skin cells have very few, or none at all; sperm usually have fewer than 100. All in all, there are said to be 10 million billion mitochondria in an adult human, which together constitute about 10 per cent of our body weight.

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In an average person, ATP is produced at a rate of 9 × 1020 molecules per second, which equates to a turnover rate (the rate at which it is produced and consumed) of about 65 kg every day.

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Buchner proposed that fermentation was carried out by biological catalysts that he named enzymes (from the Greek en zyme, meaning in yeast). He concluded that living cells are chemical factories, in which enzymes manufacture the various products.

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