Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin

by Robert M. Hazen

  19

  THREE SCENARIOS FOR THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

  p. 241 “Anyone who tells you …”: Kauffman (1995, p. 31).

  p. 243 cooperative chemical phenomenon: Such a symbiosis of metabolism and genetics would have foreshadowed events billions of years later, when precursors of our own complex cells are thought to have incorporated smaller, metabolically efficient cells. According to Margulis and Sagan (1995), mitochondria, the energy-processing organelles in eukaryotic cells, are symbionts.

  EPILOGUE—THE JOURNEY AHEAD

  p. 245 “Once to every man and nation …”: American poet James Russell Lowell wrote this poem in 1845 for the National Anti-Slavery Standard. It subsequently became a rallying hymn for abolitionists.

  p. 245 emergence of consciousness: The theory of emergence suggests that the path to self-aware life, if not specifically to the human species, may be deterministic. See, for example, Chaisson (2001) and Morowitz (2002).

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