Description
Book SynopsisThis pathbreaking book explores how life can begin, taking us from cosmic clouds of stardust, to volcanoes on Earth, to the modern chemistry laboratory. Seeking to understand life's connection to the stars, David Deamer introduces astrobiology, a new scientific discipline that studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and relates it to the birth and death of stars, planet formation, interfaces between minerals, water, and atmosphere, and the physics and chemistry of carbon compounds. Deamer argues that life began as systems of molecules that assembled into membrane-bound packages. These in turn provided an essential compartment in which more complex molecules assumed new functions required for the origin of life and the beginning of evolution. Deamer takes us from the vivid and unpromising chaos of the Earth four billion years ago up to the present and his own laboratory, where he contemplates the prospects for generating synthetic life. Engaging and accessible, First Life describes the scientific story of astrobiology while presenting a fascinating hypothesis to explain the origin of life.
Trade Review"An authoritative voice weighs in on a sprawling debate that's been raging in the scientific community for many decades, and lays out a succinct and persuasive hypothesis for the origin of life on Earth." The Scientist "Engaging... [Deamer] gives us an enriched sense of how the universe works." -- Elof Axel Carlson The Quarterly Review Of Bio "Insightfully written" Times Higher Education "Eloquent... A preeminent leader in the field tells his personal story of discovery in a unique and absorbing way." -- Chandra Wickramasinghe, University of Buckingham Bioscience "Thought-provoking... A journey of discovery into the nature of life itself." -- George M. Eberhart C&Rl News
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. A Fireball Over Australia 2. Where Did Life Begin? 3. When Did Life Begin? 4. Carbon and the Building Blocks of Life 5. The Handedness of Life 6. Energy and Life's Origins 7. Self-Assembly and Emergence 8. How To Build a Cell 9. Achieving Complexity 10. Multiple Strands of Life 11. Catalysts: Life in the Fast Lane 12. Copying Life's Blueprints 13. How Evolution Begins 14. A Grand Simulation of Prebiotic Earth 15. Prospects for Synthetic Life Epilogue Sources and Notes Index
