“ 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… Nick Lane
“ The point I want to make about methanogens is that they were the losers in the race through a bottleneck, yet nonetheless survived in niche environments. Similarly, on a larger scale, it is rare for t… Nick Lane
“ 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 w… Nick Lane
“ 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, eruptio… Nick Lane
“ We should not be too quick to dismiss our own [ocular] arrangement. As so often in biology, the situation is more complex.....we have the advantage that our own light-sensitive cells are embedded dire… Nick Lane
“ If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer, it just seems longer.’1 Nick Lane
“ Rather surprisingly, to anyone who is most familiar with textbook mitochondria, many simple single-celled eukaryotes have mitochondria that operate in the absence of oxygen. Instead of using oxygen to… Nick Lane
“ Life itself turned our planet blue and green, as tiny photosynthetic bacteria cleansed the oceans of air and sea, and filled them with oxygen. Powered by this new and potent source of energy, life eru… Nick Lane
“ 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… Nick Lane
“ 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. Nick Lane
“ Without a high flux of carbon and energy that is physically channelled over inorganic catalysts, there is no possibility of evolving cells. I would rate this as a necessity anywhere in the universe: g… Nick Lane
“ Without programmed cell death, the bonds that bind cells in complex multicellular organisms might never have evolved. Nick Lane
“ If all these considerations are correct, then the appearance of eyes really could have ignited the Cambrian explosion. And if that’s the case, then the evolution of the eye must certainly number among… Nick Lane
“ There’s no greater insult in science than to say that an argument is ‘not even wrong’, that it is invulnerable to disproof. Nick Lane
“ But whatever our beliefs, this richness of understanding should be a cause for marvel and celebration. Nick Lane
“ To visualize this dance, the transparent components of the cell had to be coloured using a stain. As it happened, the stains that were best able to colour the chromosomes were acidic. Unfortunately, t… Nick Lane
“ 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 molecul… Nick Lane
