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What is Life?:How chemistry becomes biology

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by Pross, Addy


  The network perspective on life might assist in addressing some of the questions concerning life that have been frequently raised over the years. Based on the theory of life proposed here, replication is the essence of life. That might seem to imply that a mule or lone rabbit would not be considered alive, as neither can reproduce. But, of course, mules (and lone rabbits) are alive. It is true that they cannot reproduce but they are still part of the replicative network—they are just dead-ends. A road that stops in a dead-end is still a road and part of the road network. Mules are replicative entities, not because they can reproduce—they can’t—but because of the replicative process by which they came into being. What about viruses—are they alive? One can conduct lengthy debates on the matter and ultimately the answer would depend on one’s precise definition of a living thing. Clearly viruses are lacking key life characteristics, such as possessing an independent metabolism. Having said that, however, there is no doubting that viruses are also an integral part of the life network. For viruses the question is more philosophic and linguistic than scientific.

  The merging of chemistry and biology

  The goal of this book has been to demonstrate that answers to several of the most central of life questions, including the classic one posed by Schrödinger, are finally becoming accessible. The extraordinary powers of science and the inductive method in particular, have revolutionized our lives and our understanding of the world to an extent we could not have foreseen, even a century ago. Thanks to the remarkable scientific progress these past 150 years, from Darwin’s awesome revolution in biological thinking, through to the exciting new developments in systems chemistry, biology and chemistry are finally merging, finally becoming one. The Darwinian revolution may now be nearing its ultimate goal, the one that Charles Darwin already foresaw 130 years ago—the integration of the biological sciences within the physical sciences. That merging of the two sciences means that within the limits that science itself imposes on us, we can begin to understand what is life, why it emerged, how we, a twiglet on the tree of life, together with all other living things on our planet, relate to the material world and the universe as a whole, and why, despite the unforgiving harshness of the Darwinian view, we are committed to one another, why in some deeper sense, we are one. Can that fundamental life connection serve as a ray of hope for the future of humankind, the entity that Stephen Hawking called ‘a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet’? Only time will tell.

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  INDEX

  abiogenesis 126, 182

  Allen, Woody 50, 167

  alien life 178

  Altman, Sydney 105

  archaea 3, 89

  Aristotle 32, 33

  autocatalysis 62–5, 68, 151

  bacteria 90

  bacterial diversity 23, 24

  Bohr, Niels 36

  Brenner, Sydney 53

  catalysis 61, 62, 151, 152

  Cech, Thomas 105

  chemical reactions 58

  chemotaxis 15–16 chirality 27, 28

  Chyba, Christopher 41

  Ciechanover, Aaron 22

  Cleland, Carol 41

  competitive exclusion principle 128

  complexity 4

  consciousness 177

  Conway, John 119

  Cornish-Bowden, Athel 57

  Crick, Francis 54, 55, 83

  cyanobacteria 74, 75

  Darwinian theory 8, 34, 35, 112, 113, 117, 183, 184

  Dawkins, Richard 4, 76

  death 170

  De Duve, Christian 108

  definition of life 40, 164

  Delbrück, Max 88

  dissipative structure 118

  diversity 171

  DNA 38, 69, 151

  dynamic kinetic stability (DKS) 73, 75, 78, 141, 144–6, 149, 150, 164, 166–9, 172

  dynamic stability 71

  Dyson, Freeman 103

  earth’s age 87

  Eigen, Manfred 142, 143

  Einstein, Albert 47

  entropy 62

  eukarya 90

  Feynman, Richard 47, 101

  finches, Darwin’s 129

  fitness 140, 141, 147, 148

  fitness landscape 142

  game of life 119

  Ganti, Tibor 115

  general theory of evolution 153

  Grand, Steve 76

  Haeckel, Ernst 35

  Haldane, J.B.S. 83

  Hawking, Stephen vii, 191

  Hershko, Avram 22

  hierarchical reduction 53, 137

  holism 50–7 homeostasis 6

  homochirality 28, 29, 174, 175

  horizontal gene transfer 91

  human genome project 113

  induction 43

  information 150–3

  Jobs, Steve 170

  Joyce, Gerald 128, 129, 132–4, 159, 166

  Kauffman, Stuart 102, 114

  kinetic selection 138, 139

  kingdoms of life 90

  Last Universal Common Ancestor

  (LUCA) 88, 91, 173

  Lifson, Shneior 107

  Lotka, Alfred 138, 164

 

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