Our bodies are historical accidents of evolution and ultimately can only be understood from an evolutionary perspective: how things got to be the way they are. From this point of view, a good guys-bad...
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...
All complex life shares an astonishing catalogue of elaborate traits, from sex to cell suicide to senescence, none of which is seen in a comparable form in bacteria.
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...
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 en...
Well, biology is not only about genes and environment, but also cells and the constraints of their physical structure, which we shall see have little to do with either genes or environment directly. T...
We have established on thermodynamic grounds that to make a cell from scratch requires a continuous flow of reactive carbon and chemical energy across rudimentary catalysts in a constrained through-fl...
This was difficult to prove as most hydrogenosomes have lost their entire genome, but it is now established with some certainty.1 In other words, whatever bacteria entered into a symbiotic relationshi...
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...
It seems that all eukaryotic cells either have, or once had (and then lost) mitochondria. In other words, possession of mitochondria is a sine qua non of the eukaryotic condition
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...
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,...
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...
All life on our planet is related, and the readout of letters in DNA shows exactly how. By comparing DNA sequences, we can compute statistically how closely related we are to anything, from monkeys to...
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 compa...
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...
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