In just a half century, humanity has made an astounding leap in its understanding of life. Now, one of the giants of biological science, Christian de Duve, discusses what we've learned in this half ce
Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? published 60 years ago, influenced much of the development of molecular biology. In this new book Christian De Duve, Nobel Laureate and pioneer of modern cell biology, presents a contemporary response to this classic, providing a sophisticated consideration of the key steps or bottlenecks that constrain the origins and evolution of life. De Duve surveys the entire history of life, including insights into the conditions that may have led to its emergence. He uses as landmarks the many remarkable singularities along the way, such as the single ancestry of all living beings, the universal genetic code, and the monophyletic origin of eukaryotes. The book offers a brief guided tour of biochemistry and phylogeny, from the basic molecular building blocks to the origin of humans. Each successive singularity is introduced in a sequence paralleling the hypothetical development of features and conditions on the primitive earth, explaining how and why each
Is the emergence of life on Earth the result of a single chance event or combination of lucky accidents, or is it the outcome of biochemical forces woven into the fabric of the universe? And if inevit
Increasingly absorbed in recent years by advances in our understanding of the origin of life, evolutionary history, and the advent of humankind, eminent biologist Christian de Duve of late has also p
Increasingly absorbed in recent years by advances in our understanding of the origin of life, evolutionary history, and the advent of human kind, eminent biologist Christian de Duve has pondered the f
