The Molecular Origins of Life

The Molecular Origins of Life PDF Author: André Brack
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521564755
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This 199 book reviews discoveries in astronomy, paleontology, biology and chemistry to help us to understand the likely origin of life on Earth.

The Molecular Origins of Life

The Molecular Origins of Life PDF Author: André Brack
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521564755
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This 199 book reviews discoveries in astronomy, paleontology, biology and chemistry to help us to understand the likely origin of life on Earth.

The Origins of Life

The Origins of Life PDF Author: David W. Deamer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936113040
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Life arose on Earth more than three billion years ago. How the first self-replicating systems emerged from prebiotic chemistry and evolved into primitive cell-like entities is an area of intense research, spanning molecular and cellular biology, organic chemistry, cosmology, geology, and atmospheric science. Written and edited by experts in the field, this collection from Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology provides a comprehensive account of the environment of the early Earth and the mechanisms by which the organic molecules present may have self-assembled to form replicating material such as RNA and other polymers. The contributors examine the energetic requirements for this process and focus in particular on the essential role of semi-permeable compartments in containment of primitive genetic systems. Also covered in the book are new synthetic approaches for fabricating cellular systems, the potentially extraterrestrial origin of life's building blocks, and the possibility that life once existed on Mars. Comprising five sections Setting the Stage, Components of First Life, Primitive Systems, First Polymers, and Transition to a Microbial World it is a vital reference for all scientists interested in the origin of life on Earth and the likelihood that it has arisen on other planets

The Chemistry of Life’s Origins

The Chemistry of Life’s Origins PDF Author: J. Mayo Greenberg
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401119368
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
This volume contains the lectures presented at the second course of the International School of Space Chemistry held in Erice (Sicily) from October 20 - 30 1991 at the "E. Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture". The course was attended by 58 participants from 13 countries. The Chemistry of Life's Origins is well recognized as one of the most critical subjects of modem chemistry. Much progress has been made since the amazingly perceptive contributions by Oparin some 70 years ago when he first outlined a possible series of steps starting from simple molecules to basic building blocks and ultimate assembly into simple organisms capable of replicating, catalysis and evolution to higher organisms. The pioneering experiments of Stanley Miller demonstrated already forty years ago how easy it could have been to form the amino acids which are critical to living organisms. However we have since learned and are still learning a great deal more about the primitive conditions on earth which has led us to a rethinking of where and how the condition for prebiotic chemical processes occurred. We have also learned a great deal more about the molecular basis for life. For instance, the existence of DNA was just discovered forty years ago.

Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life

Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life PDF Author: Sidney Walter Fox
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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The Origin of Life

The Origin of Life PDF Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141941839
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The origins of life remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of science. Growing evidence suggests that the first organisms lived deep underground, in environments previously thought to be uninhabitable, and that microbes carried inside rocks have travelled between Earth and Mars. But the question remains: how can life spring into being from non-living chemicals? THE FIFTH MIRACLE reveals the remarkable new theories and discoveries that seem set to transform our understanding of life's role in the unfolding drama of the cosmos.

Crossing the Boundaries of Life

Crossing the Boundaries of Life PDF Author: Karl S. Matlin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226819345
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
"The difficulty of reconciling chemical mechanisms with the functions of whole living systems has plagued biologists since the development of cell theory in the nineteenth century. As Karl Matlin argues in Crossing the Boundaries of Life, it is no coincidence that this longstanding knot of scientific inquiry was loosened most meaningfully by the work of a cytologist, the Nobel laureate Günter Blobel. In 1975, using an experimental setup that did not contain any cells at all, Blobel was able to synthesize proteins to theorize how proteins in the cell communicate spatially, an idea he called signal hypothesis. Over the next 20 years, Blobel and other scientists were able to dissect this process into its precise molecular details. For elaborating his signal concept into a process he termed membrane topogenesis-the idea that each protein in the cell is synthesized with an "address" that directs the protein to its correct destination within the cell-Blobel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1999. Matlin argues that Blobel's investigative strategy and its subsequent application addressed the fundamental unresolved dilemma that had bedeviled biology from its very beginning, allowing biology to overcome the barrier that had long blocked progress toward mechanistic explanations of life. Crossing the Boundaries of Life thus uses Blobel's research and life story to shed light on the importance of cell biology for twentieth-century science, illustrating how it propelled the development of adjacent disciplines like biochemistry and molecular biology"--

The Origins of Life and the Universe

The Origins of Life and the Universe PDF Author: Paul F. Lurquin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231507666
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
The Origins of Life and the Universe is the culmination of a university science professor's search for understanding and is based on his experiences teaching the fundamental issues of physics, chemistry, and biology in the classroom. What is life? Where did it come from? How can understanding the origins of life on Earth help us understand the origins of the universe, and vice versa? These are questions that have occupied us all. This is a book, then, about the beginning of things—of the universe, matter, stars, and planetary systems, and finally, of life itself—topics of profound interest that are rarely considered together. After surveying prescientific accounts of the origins of life, the book examines the concepts of modern physics and cosmology, in particular the two pillars of modern physics, relativity and quantum theory, and how they can be applied to the Big Bang model of the creation of the universe. The author then considers molecular genetics and DNA, the famed building block of life. In addition to assessing various hypotheses concerning the appearance of the first bacterial cells and their evolution into more complex eukaryotic cells, this section explains how "protocells" may have started a kind of integrated metabolism and how horizontal gene transfer may have speeded up evolution. Finally, the book discusses the possibility that life did not originate on planet Earth but first appeared on other solar planets, or perhaps in other star systems. How would such a possibility affect our understanding of the meaning of life, or of its ultimate fate in the universe? The book ends as it begins, with profound questions and penetrating answers, a state-of-the-art guide to unlocking the scientific mysteries of life and matter.

Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life

Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life PDF Author: Horst Rauchfuss
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540788239
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
How did life begin on the early Earth? We know that life today is driven by the universal laws of chemistry and physics. By applying these laws over the past ?fty years, en- mous progress has been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms that are the foundations of the living state. For instance, just a decade ago, the ?rst human genome was published, all three billion base pairs. Using X-ray diffraction data from crystals, we can see how an enzyme molecule or a photosynthetic reaction center steps through its catalytic function. We can even visualize a ribosome, central to all life, translate - netic information into a protein. And we are just beginning to understand how molecular interactions regulate thousands of simultaneous reactions that continuously occur even in the simplest forms of life. New words have appeared that give a sense of this wealth of knowledge: The genome, the proteome, the metabolome, the interactome. But we can’t be too smug. We must avoid the mistake of the physicist who, as the twentieth century began, stated con?dently that we knew all there was to know about physics, that science just needed to clean up a few dusty corners. Then came relativity, quantum theory, the Big Bang, and now dark matter, dark energy and string theory. Similarly in the life sciences, the more we learn, the better we understand how little we really know. There remains a vast landscape to explore, with great questions remaining.

Origins of Life

Origins of Life PDF Author: Freeman John Dyson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Life
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Search for Life's Origins

The Search for Life's Origins PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309042461
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
The field of planetary biology and chemical evolution draws together experts in astronomy, paleobiology, biochemistry, and space science who work together to understand the evolution of living systems. This field has made exciting discoveries that shed light on how organic compounds came together to form self-replicating molecules-the origin of life. This volume updates that progress and offers recommendations on research programs-including an ambitious effort centered on Mars-to advance the field over the next 10 to 15 years. The book presents a wide range of data and research results on these and other issues: The biogenic elements and their interaction in the interstellar clouds and in solar nebulae. Early planetary environments and the conditions that lead to the origin of life. The evolution of cellular and multicellular life. The search for life outside the solar system. This volume will become required reading for anyone involved in the search for life's beginnings-including exobiologists, geoscientists, planetary scientists, and U.S. space and science policymakers.