Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

by Nick Lane

“Original and awe-inspiring . . . an exhilarating tour of some of the most profound and important ideas in biology.”—New Scientist

Where does DNA come from? What is consciousness? How did the eye evolve? Drawing on a treasure trove of new scientific knowledge, Nick Lane expertly reconstructs evolution’s history by describing its ten greatest inventions—from sex and warmth to death—resulting in a stunning account of nature’s ingenuity.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology, Evolution, History, Popular Science, Nature

353 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 22, 2009

About the author

Dr Nick Lane is a British biochemist and writer. He was awarded the first Provost's Venture Research Prize in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, where he is now a Reader in Evolutionary Biochemistry. Dr Lane’s research deals with evolutionary biochemistry and bioenergetics, focusing on the origin of life and the evolution of complex cells. Dr Lane was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is leading the UCL Research Frontiers Origins of Life programme. He was awarded the 2011 BMC Research Award for Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution, and the 2015 Biochemical Society Award for his sustained and diverse contribution to the molecular life sciences and the public understanding of science.

Nick Lane is the author of three acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, which have sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide, and have been translated into 20 languages.

Nick's first book, Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World (OUP, 2002) is a sweeping history of the relationship between life and our planet, and the paradoxical ways in which adaptations to oxygen play out in our own lives and deaths. It was selected as one of the Sunday Times Books of the Year for 2002.

His second book, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (OUP, 2005) is an exploration of the extraordinary effects that mitochondria have had on the evolution of complex life. It was selected as one of The Economist's Books of the Year for 2005, and shortlisted for the 2006 Royal Society Aventis Science Book Prize and the Times Higher Young Academic Author of the Year Award.

Nick's most recent book, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution (Profile/Norton 2009) is a celebration of the inventiveness of life, and of our own ability to read the deep past to reconstruct the history of life on earth. The great inventions are: the origin of life, DNA, photosynthesis, the complex cell, sex, movement, sight, hot blood, consciousness and death. Life Ascending won the 2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, and was named a Book of the Year by New Scientist, Nature, the Times and the Independent, the latter describing him as “one of the most exciting science writers of our time.”

Nick's next book, due to be published in 2015 by Norton and Profile, is entitled The Vital Question. Why is life the way it is? It will attack a central problem in biology - why did complex life arise only once in four billion years, and why does all complex life share so many peculiar properties, from sex and speciation to senescence?

Nick was also a co-editor of Life in the Frozen State (CRC Press, 2004), the first major text book on cryobiology in the genomic era.

Peer-reviewed articles by Nick Lane have been published in top international journals, including Nature, Science and Cell, and he has published many features in magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American. He has appeared regularly on TV and radio, and speaks in schools and at literary and science festivals. He also worked for several years in the pharmaceutical industry, ultimately as Strategic Director of Medi Cine, a medical multimedia company based in London, where he was responsible for developing interactive approaches to medical education.

Nick is married to Dr Ana Hidalgo-Simon and lives in London with their two young sons, Eneko and Hugo. He spent many years clinging to rock faces in search of fossils and thrills, but his practical interest in palaeontology is rarely rewarded with more than a devil’s toenail. When not climbing, writing or hunting for wild campsites, he can occasionally be found playing the fiddle in London pubs with the Celtic ensemble Probably Not, or exploring Romanesque churches.
http://www.nick-lane.net/About%20Nick...

Reviews

[BookHunter M ُH َM َD · Rating 4 out of 5]

فى البدء كانت كلمة الرب الإله
خلقت حياه
الخلق منها اتعلموا
فاتكلموا
اتكلموا

صمت بطعم الجهل
و كلام يحمل كل معانى الإستخفاف

أترضى أن يكون أبيك قردا أو ضفدع
هل رأيت يوما جرذا يتحول إلى أرنب

لا يا مولانا إنت عندك حق و كل العلماء الأجانب بيهروا فى المفيش

في خطاب أمام الأكاديمية البابوية للعلوم عام 1996، قال البابا يوحنا بولس الثاني: ان “العلم الجديد يؤدي إلى الإعتراف بأن نظرية التطور هي أكثر من مجرد نظرية. من اللافت حقا أنه تم قبول هذه النظرية تدريجيا من قبل باحثين في أعقاب سلسلة من الإكتشافات في مجالات مختلفة من المعرفة. إن التقارب، غير المقصود وغير المفبرك، لنتائح الأعمال التي أجريت بشكل مستقل هو بحد ذاته حجة كبيرة تأتي في صالح هذه النظرية"

الغرب الدينى يلحق بركب الحضارة و نحن أبعد حتى من مجرد مناقشة الموضوع بصورة علمية

فلنركز فى هذا الكتاب و اعتذر عن الإطالة
لن أتكلم كثيرا و لندع الصوره تتحدث عن نفسها
عشرة أحداث هامة سماها الكاتب اختراعات لولاها لما وصلنا إلى ما نحن عليه طبقا لنظرية التطور

1 أصل الحياة



فى قاع المحيط و داخل الفوهات الحرمائية توافرات الظروف البدائية لتكون الأحماض الأمينية و من ثم البكتريا فى أبسط صورها

2 DNA



لولا تكون الدى ان ايه لظلت البروتينات و الأحماض الأمينية مجرد تفاعلات متسلسلة مرتبطة بظروف التفاعل كأى تفاعل كيميائى عادى

3 الكلوروفيل و البلاستيدات الخضراء و عملية التمثيل الضوئى



لولا ان ابتلعت احدى الخلايا البكتيرية خلية اخرى من البكتريا الزرقاء ذات البلاستيدات الخضراء لما نشأت النباتات التى أدى وجودها إلى زيادة الأكسجين على الأرض لما هو عليه الأن و ساعد على الخطوة القادمة

4 الخلية المعقدة





خلية بداخلها عدة أجهزة قادرة على الأيض بمعدلات كبيرة و لها نواة و قائمة بذاتها فى عالم لا زال يحبو

5 التكاثر الجنسى





لم يعد التكاثر مجرد انقسام للخلية بمعزل عن شريك يتبادل معها رقصة الحياة و يمنحها دفء المشاركة فى عالم صغير لا يكترث بعد بالحب

6 الحركة



من الأسواط الهدبية لفهد الشيتا و الحركة بركة

7 الإبصار



عين معقدة لكن ليست مثالية و عيون مركبة قوية و كلها نشأت من مجرد خلايا حساسة للضوء فى أعماق محيط ليس به ضوء أصلا

8 الدم الحار



منه لله الدم الحار ده كان زماننا بننام طول الشتاء

9 الوعى



نعى كل شىء حولنا الا أغلب ما حولنا .. أه و الله

10 الموت

ما أجمل نومه على كتوف أصحابك
تعرف صادقك من كذابك
تبحث عن صاحب أنبل وش
في الزمن الغش

[Gendou · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot of fun reading this book up until the end, when I started to worry about the author's propensity towards exaggeration and speculation.
For anyone who wants to learn about cutting edge speculation on the origin of life, Eukaryotas, and sex, it's definitely worth a read!
Anyone allergic to new-age nonsense sociology, just skip the last 9th chapter.
Everyone should take the last chapter with a very large grain of salt, because it's full of speculation, overblown claims, and other lies.

1. The Origin of Life
The author is obsessed with hydrothermal vents.
The evidence for life's origin in hydrothermal vents is overstated as fact, despite its true status as a highly speculative theory.

2. DNA
I was astounded to learn that the evolution of the genetic code (which RNA sequences code for which amino acids) arose only once,
but the machinery for DNA replication arose twice, independently! Once in the archaea, and once for all the others.
Though, the crucial evidence in the argument is the interpenetration of the DNA replication genes as a molecular clock.
The author carefully hides the error margin for this method of dating, which approaches unity when applied to organisms capable of lateral genetic exchange.
Still, it is curious that the whole machinery of DNA replication seems to follow two, reportedly distinct, paradigms.

3. Photosynthesis
The textbook story of photosynthesis is exposed as a gross over-simplification.
A more detailed, but again speculative, re-telling is a neat story of long-lost cousins exchanging DNA.
Not as incestuous as it sounds...

4. The complex cell
Like photosynthesis, the story ends up being quite involved compared to the high-school biology explanation.
To me, the most interesting insight is the theorized reason for a cell nucleus: to provide a barrier to transposons.
The porous nuclear acts as a speed bump, allowing time for transposons to be broken down before traveling out to the mitochondria.
Cool stuff!

5. Sex
What is it good for?
This chapter was pretty hot, but nothing I didn't learn in High School.
Get your mind out of the gutter! I was talking about AP Biology!

6. Movement
Lots of talk about muscles, and, as usual, some neat surprises.

7. Sight
Yes, I'd rather half an eye than no eye at all.
Brine shrimp come to the rescue as a supreme example in support of evolution.

8. Hot Blood
Were the dinosaurs hot blooded?
What makes "hot" vs. "cold" blood?
The answers may bore you...
I'm half joking, because this chapter was full of interesting theories, too.
But I could care less for paleontological bickering.

9. Consciousness
This chapter is full of half-baked (and worse) philosophy, on top of misunderstandings on basic lessons from physics.
For example: "we don't even know ... why matter exists, rather than nothing at all"
This is an atrocious misunderstanding of physics.
See A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
The most frightening digression in this chapter was the authors claim that "panpsychism is taken seriously again".
He touts Graham Cairns-Smith's "bomb in the basement" dualist argument. (Boo! Hiss!)
Yes, this chapter, in a modern biology book, contains a "serious" claim of DUALISM!!
The orgy of ignorance continues as the author asserts "we don't even understand how quantum mechanics works".
He goes on to claim that quantum physics leaves room for free will and a soul.
It's a good thing I listened to the formless audiobook, or I'd have had a bonfire right then and there.
But I had the misfortune to be in the middle of my commute to work, so I kept reading.
I tried to find my happy place during some talk of "consciousness as quantum vibrations".
Then, I wept aloud at the mention of a particle source of feelings which might be discovered in the particle accelerators.
Obviously, the wiring and behavior of the brain's neural network is the source of mind and feelings.
Nick Lane should stick to biology, he hasn't the background to discuss physics.

10. Death
Following the chapter on consciousness, I had little patience left.
This chapter is about how death works and how we can overcome it.
The author seems pretty set in his Ray Kurzweil like denial of the inevitability of death.
It is claimed multiple times that death is simple and can be prevented biochemically.
The chapter focuses chiefly on the hype surrounding the TOR gene.
It's really not worth reading unless you're a fan of popular (i.e. mythological) pharmacology.
There is some interesting theorizing as to the evolutionary cause of aging and death.
Strangely, there is NO MENTION of the primary cause of aging: telomere shortening.
The primary defense against cancer our body uses is a fixed number of cellular replications.
This ensures that, unless or until malignancy is achieved, tumors eventually stop growing.
The replication limit on stem cells produces a finite lifetime to enjoy tissue repair.
It seems obvious to me that reduced quality and speed of tissue repair and replacement amount to the symptoms of aging.
Nick Lane either has never heard of telomeres, or has chosen to deceive the reader by leaving them out.

[Lois Bujold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent pop science writing, as absorbing as a novel (I read it in two days). The author has a knack for compelling narrative flow that seems both natural, and accumulating to some sense of Getting Somewhere by the end, always very satisfying.

Lots of new things from recent (and less recent) research that I hadn't yet heard about, which was much of what I was hoping for from this book. It also gives, in passing along the way, a good sense of how science itself evolves. Wow has biology ever advanced since I was in college. (I credit the computer, even more than the new scanning techs. Mass DNA crunching, with all the new data it is revealing, would be impossible without it.)

One kudo deducted for describing Watson and Crick without giving credit by name to Rosalind Franklin, which would only have taken a clause. Half a clause. "and a few pilfered X-ray diffraction photos" --> "and a few X-ray diffraction photos pilfered from Rosalind Franklin" would have done just that little bit towards righting an old wrong.

I had been rather hoping Lane would do for photosynthesis the sort of lucid and detailed explanation he'd done for mitochondria in his prior title, but since it only had a chapter and not a whole volume, we only got as far as "lucid". He did offer a book rec for further reading on the topic, Eating the Sun which, ha, my county library has and therefore so will I, shortly, so that's promising.

Highly recommended for general readers.

Ta, L.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

What were the ten greatest inventions of evolution? According to Nick Lane, author of Life Ascending, they were the Origin of Life itself, DNA, Photosynthesis, The Complex Cell, Sex, Movement, Sight, Hot Blood, Consciousness, and Death. It’s a pretty good list. I thought about it and could not come up with any substitutions.

The origins of life are arguably not evolutionary science at all, but a separate field called abiogenesis. Nevertheless, this book’s chapter on how life started is one of its best, making a good argument that life may have begun in the deep ocean, not in the well known “hot smoker” vents, but in cooler, longer lived alkaline hydrothermal vents, which precipitate a form of rock that is riddled with tiny pockets about the size of a cell, that could have served to concentrate and protect the chemical precursors necessary to light the spark of life. When all the components were ready it probably happened quickly.

if any reaction takes a millennium to complete, then the chances are that all the reactants will simply dissipate or break down in the meantime, unless they are continually replenished by other, faster, reactions. The origin of life was certainly a matter of chemistry, so the same logic applies: the basic reactions of life must have taken place spontaneously and quickly.

To say that life “happened” requires some further clarification. The chemical processes necessary to create a living cell may have occurred many times given the similarities of the environment that birthed them, but to truly be life the organism also needed a way to survive and reproduce, and it was that bit of chemistry that set life in motion. “It is certainly true that natural selection can’t work without some sort of replicator; and it is equally true that life can only evolve complexity through the auspices of natural selection. For many molecular biologists, then, the origin of life is the origin of replication.”

From the origin of life the book moves on to DNA, and the author has provided a number of examples to help the reader understand.

Each [DNA] letter is copied with a precision bordering on the miraculous, recreating the order of the original with an error rate of about one letter in 1,000 million. In comparison, for a scribe to work with a similar precision, he would need to copy out the entire bible 280 times before making a single error. In fact, the scribes’ success was a lot lower. There are said to be 24,000 surviving manuscript copies of the New Testament, and no two copies are identical.

Nevertheless, even with the astonishing fidelity of DNA replication, errors appear among each cell’s three billion base pairs in the human genome when it divides.

Each time a human cell divides, you’d expect to see about three mutations per set of chromosomes. And the more times that a cell divides, the more such mutations accumulate, ultimately contributing to diseases like cancer. Mutations also cross generations. If a fertilised egg develops as a female embryo, it takes about thirty rounds of cell division to form a new egg cell; and each round adds a few more mutations. 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 of cell division, the older the man, the worse it gets.

Extrapolating from this, we see that “even an average child, of youthful parents, has around 200 new mutations compared with their parents (although only a handful of these may be directly harmful).”

The idea of copying errors can be extended further, to add insight into the evolution of species.

Assuming that humans split off from our common ancestor with chimps around 6 million years ago, and accumulated mutations at the rate of 200 per generation ever since, we’ve still only had time to modify about 1 per cent of our genome in the time available. As chimps have been evolving at a similar rate, theoretically we should expect to see a 2 per cent difference. In fact the difference is a little less than that; in terms of DNA sequence, chimps and humans are around 98.6 per cent identical.

The book then moves into photosynthesis, the foundation for the evolution of complex life everywhere. “All our energy is a beam of sunlight set free from its captive state in food.” Since photosynthesis is often held up by creationists as an example of special creation (as in “what good is half an eye, or half a wing?”), the book has a good description of the steps involved, examining them at the level of chemistry and physics to explain how energy is stored and released, and how even the precursor reactions to full blown photosynthesis would have been beneficial. The end state is marvelously complex but also an incredibly inefficient Rube Goldberg contraption that wastes about 96% of the potential energy – in other words, it is exactly the type of process evolution would evolve, since it cannot be forward looking, and can only work with what it has at the present moment, preserving the changes that work and discarding those that do not.

Like life itself, complex eukaryotic cells seem to have emerged from a chance encounter. “The eukaryotic cell only evolved once because the union of two prokaryotes, in which one gains entry to another, is truly a rare event, a genuinely fateful encounter. All that we hold dear in this life, all the marvels of our world, stem from a single event that embodied both chance and necessity.” The author examines several theories for its appearance, and settles on one that posits an accidental combination of two primitive cells. “the eukaryotic cell did not evolve in a standard ‘Darwinian’ way, but rather by some sort of mammoth gene fusion. From a genetic point of view, the first eukaryote was a chimera–half archaea, half bacteria.” In this scenario, each of the key cellular organelles, such as the nucleus, the cell wall, and mitochondria, were pulled into the cell and established themselves without being consumed; once established they created a symbiotic relationship among themselves to become the vastly more efficient modern eukaryotic cell.

The chapter on sex starts the reader down a rabbit hole of speculation that it is an absurdly expensive and questionable process that should never have evolved in the first place. “Most of us sense that the magic of sex (as a form of reproduction) lies in exactly this ability to generate variation, to pull a unique being from a hat every time. But when scrutinised with the care of a mathematical geneticist, it is far from obvious that variety for variety’s sake is a good thing. Why break up a winning combination; why not just clone it?”

The argument that sex improves species because each new offspring is a new roll of the genetic dice is also shown to be weak. “sex in itself doesn’t introduce any new variation to a population. Without mutation, sex merely shuffles existing genes around, removing the bad ones as it goes, thereby ultimately restricting variation.”

So what is it good for? The author argues that it is essential to stay one step ahead of parasites. “Sex helps because parasites evolve rapidly: they have short lifespans and heaving populations. It doesn’t take them long to adapt to their host at the most intimate molecular scale–protein to protein, gene to gene. Failure to do so costs them their life; success gives them the freedom to grow and replicate.”

The next three chapters are on Movement, Sight, and Hot Blood. All are interesting, particularly in the examples the author provides to expand upon his arguments, but most readers already familiar with evolution will not find any great insights in them.

The book ends with chapters on Consciousness and on Death which, for us thinking beings are inextricably linked. “The mind is conscious only when it becomes aware that it is conscious: when the penny drops.” Once we think about it we realize that life is a trap with no way out. “Adjust the ‘death’ settings, to make cell death less likely, and the outcome is cancerous, unstoppable growth. But make cell death too likely and the outcome is a withering away. Cancer and degeneration are two sides of the same coin: both undermine multicellular life.”

Anyone familiar with evolution knows that it is “concerned” – an overly anthropomorphic term – only with passing along genes, which means improving survival chances so that organisms can reach reproductive age. Once past the age of reproduction evolution is powerless to further enhance survival fitness because there is no way to pass along any beneficial traits. The author uses a good example to explain this:

there is a statistical likelihood of death regardless of ageing–of being hit by a bus, or a stone falling from the sky, or being eaten by a tiger, or consumed by disease. Even if you are immortal you are unlikely to live forever. Individuals who concentrate their reproductive resources in the earlier part of their life are therefore statistically more likely to have more offspring than individuals who count on an unhurried schedule, reproducing, say, once every 500 years or so, and regrettably losing their head after only 450. Cram in more sex earlier on and you’ll probably leave behind more offspring, who inherit your ‘sex-early’ genes,

We humans are not built to last; for each life we owe a death. We can tweak the system, making minor adjustments to the average life span, but in the end we were not built for long lives. Errors creep into our DNA replication, which are themselves repeated with further errors. Eventually the mechanism jams, the critical systems that ensure programmed cell death fail, and cancer carries us away. If not cancer, some other vital cellular management function breaks down and does us in. Long lives or short, we can only try to make the most of life for as long as we have it. Marcus Aurelius, emperor and stoic, would simply shrug his shoulders and say that we should care about the things that are within our power to affect, and not worry about what we cannot change.

I enjoyed this book. It is well written for readers with a general interest in evolution; the chemistry and physics are kept to a minimum and explained using simple examples. I learned a number of things from it, and it helped point me toward new areas of evolutionary study that I want to explore.

[R Nair · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book that really delves into the biochemical reasons for things being as they are in nature. From the origin of life in alkaline vents surrounded by sea water creating organic compounds to the evolutionary reasoning behind the existence of death itself, originating from the process of apoptosis (cellular suicide) in bacterial prehistory to curb bacteriophage infections.
This book is an excellent introduction into the chemistry of life and the various major fields of study where research has been undertaken to explain the origin of biological features we all take for granted. If you pick this book up, heads-up : some sections of the book may seem overtly technical when they begin but if you continue on, the argument will be very clear soon enough. The author ensures that the reader untrained in biochemistry would retain the core argument before utilising it to explain something far-reaching or salient that deeply pertains to life as we know it. Highly recommended.

[Mehmet]

Göz nasıl ortaya çıktı?
Cinsiyetler nasıl ve neden var?
Bazı canlılar neden sıcak, bazıları soğuk kanlı?
Neden cinsel ilişki var?
Kaslar nasıl çalışır?
DNA nasıl oluştu?

Gibi sıklıkla dile getirilen, bilimin açıklayamadığı düşünülen pek çok konu üzerine güncel tartışmalar hakkında muazzam bilgiler içeren bir kitap.

Bu kitapta benim de kafamda bugüne kadar soru işareti olan pek çok konunun cevaplarını buldum.

[Miglė · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skaitant šitą knygą man susidaro įspūdis, kad turiu lengvą disleksiją.

Ar tai dėl vertimo? Ar originalus tekstas irgi toks raišas? Ar knygos vertimas buvo pernelyg skubiai išleistas? Nenoriu badyti pirštais į vertėją ar kalbos redaktorių, ar leidyklą - niekad žmogus nežinai, kaip tokia situacija susiklostė - bet kaip būtų buvę nuostabu, jei šios knygos tekstą būtų peržiūrėjęs dar koks vienas žmogus ir padaręs jį labiau skaitomą! Dabar, deja, ši knyga man kelia frustraciją ir širdgėlą.

Pavyzdys:

Vienintelis būdas planetai susikurti deguonies prisotintą atmosferą, išvengti dulkėtos, raudonos Marso lemties - išsaugoti šiek tiek augalinės materijos, kuri būtų atspari stichijoms ir gyvybės išradingumui ieškant būdų ją panaudoti energijai. Ji turi būti palaidota.

Kas "ji"? Turbūt energija, nes ji minima paskutinė. Žiūrime kitą pastraipą:

Taip ir yra. Išsaugota augalinė materija palaidota kaip anglis, nafta, gamtinės dujos, suodžiai, medžio anglis ar dulkės uolienose Žemės gelmėse.

A, vadinasi ne - "ji" buvo augalinė materija. Kodėl tada nepakartojus frazės "augalinė materija", užuot rašius "ji", jei yra dviprasmybė? Be to, argi nebūtų puiku, jei frazė "atspari stichijoms ir gyvybės išradingumui ieškant būdų ją panaudoti energijai" būtų kažkaip suskaidyta ar bent jau pamažinta tų vienas ant kito lipančių naudininkų?

Kitas pavyzdys:

Didžiausia medžiagų apykaitos sparta galiausiai priklauso nuo to, kiek deguonies suvartoja "galutiniai naudotojai" - t.y. raumenų mitochondrijos. Kuo greičiau suvartoja, tuo didesnė didžiausia medžiagų apykaitos sparta.

Tai priklauso nuo greičio ar nuo kiekio? Ta prasme, pagalvojus galima išsiaiškinti, bet esu tikra, kad buvo galima parašyti aiškiau. Ok, praleidžiam vieną pastraipą ir toliau pateiksiu ištrauką be jokių iškarpymų (taigi nėra trūkstamų detalių, kurias praleidžiu), tik su savo komentarais.

Anot A. Beneto ir Dž. Rubeno, didžiausia medžiagų apykaitos sparta kažkaip "padidina" ir medžiagų apykaitos spartą ramybės būsenoje. Kitaip tariant, atletiško žinduolio, pasižyminčio didele ištverme, medžiagų apykaitos sparta ramybės būsenoje taip pat bus didelė - jis ir toliau kvėpuodamas sunaudos daug deguonies, net jei gulės nieko neveikdamas.

Cool, super aišku.

Šį teiginį grindė empiriniais stebėjimais. Anot jų, bet kurios priežasties sukelta didžiausia žinduolių, paukščių ar roplių medžiagų apykaitos sparta yra maždaug 10 kartų didesnė už medžiagų apykaitos spartą ramybės būsenoje.

Ok, čia truputį trikdo, kad panaudotas tas "dešimt kartų", bet galim suprasti, kad kalbama apie tam tikro gyvūno greičiausios medžiagų apykaitos ir medžiagų apykaitos ramybės būsenoje tiesioginį ryšį. Ramybės būsenoje medžiagų apykaita vyks ne šiaip random lėtai, o 10 kartų lėčiau negu greičiausias to gyvūno medžiagų apykaitos variantas.

Taigi atrankos būdu įtvirtinama didžiausia medžiagų apykaitos sparta didėja ir ramybės būsenoje. Jei ji padidėja dešimteriopai (tiek skiriasi žinduolių ir driežų), medžiagų apykaitos sparta ramybės būsenoje padidėja tiek pat.

Kokios atrankos būdu įtvirtinama? Ta prasme susidariusi per natūralią atranką? Nesvarbu. Čia tas pats skaičius 10 kažkodėl naudojamas lyginti ne vieno gyvūno, o dviejų skirtingų rūšių gyvūnų medžiagų apykaitą, kas vėl žiauriai confusing. Nu bet gerai. Žinduolių medžiagų apykaita 10 x didesnė už driežų, nesvarbu, ar abu jie miega, ar bėga.

Tuo metu gyvūnas sukuria tiek daug vidinės šilumos, kad, tiesą sakant, atsitiktinai tampa "šiltakraujis".

KOKS GYVŪNAS?! Turbūt driežas, jei tapimas "šiltakrauju" yra kažkas neįprasto? KURIUO METU?? Ta prasme, jūs matot, kad niekas prieš tai pastraipoje nesufleruoja, apie kokį gyvūną čia kalbama paskutiniame sakinyje.

Gerai, čia baigsiu su pavyzdžiais, juos rodau ne tam, kad pasišaipyčiau, o dėl to, kad man iš tikrųjų baisiai skaudu ir liūdna. Knygos temos be galo įdomios ir aš iš visos širdies noriu suprasti, bet negaliu, nes tekstas man trukdo. Bandau prisiminti, ar pastaruoju metu nepatyriau kokios galvos traumos. Gal kitiems tas tekstas visai skaidrus ir aiškus? Gal man tiesiog reikia labiau pasistengti? Bet negaliu, po kiek laiko tiesiog apima jausmas, kad ta teksto hermeneutika visai beprasmiška ir nepadeda man suprasti nei ribosomų, nei medžiagų apykaitos.

Skaudama širdimi padedu knygą atgal. Gal verta susirasti ją originalo kalba?..

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be a mixed bag. I found some chapters such as Complex Cells and Hot Blood fascinating and others such as Movement and Consciousness quite tedious. The author does a good job of reducing complex biological processes into simpler terms but I felt he used weird analogies far too often to illustrate his point. When he started comparing muscle proteins into classical music I had to roll my eyes. In addition, a few more illustrations would be useful to show some concepts.
It was nice to catch up on recent discoveries and see how much the science has progressed since I last studied biology which was in high school and first year university fifteen years ago.

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the best books I have ever had the pleasure to read. If you like a book that delves deep into every tiny detail, this is the book for you. If things like ATP, leaky mitochondria, bacteria that can live in strange conditions, how DNA was discovered (and how Crick thought aliens put it on Earth), you will enjoy Lane's wonderful adventure of how life came to be. The science in this book was outstanding.

[Dr. Carl Ludwig Dorsch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nick Lane is a self-described evolutionary biochemist and presently Senior Lecturer in the Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution was awarded the 2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books. He has previously published Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World and Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. His What is Living? Why Energy Drives the Origin and Evolution of Life is expected in 2014.

In Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution Lane focuses on the inventing rather than the inventions, the origination, the birth of the thing rather than its life. And biological understanding being what it is, this leads him, from the very beginning (The Origin of Life) to the search for precursors. The subsequent deployment, operation, and implications of the enumerated “inventions,” though not entirely ignored, are not really the purview here.

For example:

If the railroad happened to be one of Lane’s “Ten Great Inventions of Evolution”, there would be much about ancient Greek wheel-rut roads (including those in Sicily and Cyrenica), noting their consistent depth of 7 to 15 centimeters, their rut width of 20 to 22 centimeters and gauge of 138 to144 centimeters. Mention would be made of rut sidings, allowing vehicles to pass where only a single rut is available. These Greek rut-roads might be compared with those cut into Vespasian’s tunnel at Bons (in that segment of the Via Flamina known as Petra Pertusa) where the gauges ranged from 110 to 165 centimeters.

Further extended discussion would be had of Greek cartage, and the sometimes unclear distinction between the hamaxa and the hamaxa tetrakulos – two and four wheeled carts – this in the context of the inappropriateness of the hamaxa tetrakulos for travel on wheel-rut roads, unless, of course, they possessed a swiveling front axle.

Which in turn would lead to a discussion of the development of the bogie, or turning-train, the mechanism by which, through first attaching the front wheels of a cart or wagon to its shaft and only then to the chassis by way of a pivot, the front wheels of a four wheeled vehicle may turn independently – and how this, though used by the Celts before the Common Era, only came into fuller use in the Middle Ages, perhaps encouraged by the needs of steerable four wheeled battering rams, propelled from the rear.

Eventually we would come to a discussion of mining technology, and mining trucks running on wooden rails in the middle of the European millennium, and then even more eventually to metal clad wood rails, then to iron and steel, then the history of steam engines (with emphasis on the Greek aeopile), etc., etc.

What we would not get from Lane however would be a discussion of the economic and political imperatives which drove, in fairly short order, the spanning of the terrestrial planet with a network of rail lines. Nor would we likely find much consideration of the resultant transformation of world’s social, economic and political culture (not to mention the matériel of its industrial base, from fossil fuels to forestry to metallurgy), or of the railroad’s relation to the various imperialist projects on all the world’s inhabited continents, or to the great European wars of the 20th century, or even to the telegraph (though we might have an amusing aside on Railroad Time and the institution of time zones).

And we fairly certainly would not find any mention of the various other technical and social transformations which occurred in partial causal tandem with railroad development, like the iron and steel transformation of the advanced metropolitan urban environment, and most certainly nothing of rail’s still shifting relation to a subsequent high-speed pavement-based internal combustion culture (or to air traffic and air freight, for that matter), etc.

Of course even a 28 page essay (the average length of those in Life Ascending) on the invention of the railroad, if that invention were indeed to be offered as one of the 10 most pivotal in the course of human history, would have to have its limits. One makes choices. I only offer the preceding to illustrate the sort of choices Life Ascending makes.

That essential frustration aside (and, admittedly other smaller and perhaps related complaints – though I cannot help but note here Lane’s consistent propensity to flog his own favorite contemporary evolutionary speculations while only vaguely qualifying their standing relative to the current consensus), I found the volume a useful hint at an early 21st century biochemical perspective. Dr. Lane is a biochemist; I have not even the faintest grasp of the fact of the three? four? five? 103? 118? a possible 155? elements. He’s got me thinking about the phase problem in x-ray (particularly protein) crystallography and transposons, I’ll grant him that.

[الشناوي محمد جبر · Rating 4 out of 5]

ارتقاء الحياة (الاختراعات العشرة العظيمة للتطور)
نيك لين
.........................
يعتبر هذا الكتاب من الكتب المميزة جدا في التعرف علي عملية التطور وكيف بدأت الحياة علي الأرض، وكيف تطورت. ورغم أن الكتاب صعب إلا أن الفائدة في مطالعته أو مطالعة بعض فصوله، تعتبر فائدة مضمونة.
في الفصل الأول (أصل الحياة) بدأ الكاتب حديثه عن بداية ظهور الحياة علي الأرض القديمة قبل أن تنتعش بغاز الأكسجين، وقبل أن يتطور غلافها الجوي إلي ما هو عليه الآن. يرى العلماء أن الحياة قبل عصر سيادة غاز الأكسجين لم تكن تعتمد علي الأكسجين الذي كان شحيحا، كما أنها لم تكن تعتمد علي درجات الحرارة المعتدلة التي نعيش فيها الآن؛ بل ظهرت الحياة في ظروف تشبه تلك الموجودة في بعض الفوهات الحارة في قلب المحيط، حيث الحرارة العالية، وانعدام الأكسجين. من هناك بدأت الحياة. ومن هناك يشرح في الفصل الأول كيف تم ذلك.
في الفصل الثاني (دي إن أيه) تحدث عن كشف الشفرة الوراثية، وعن مشروع الجينوم البشري، وعن تركيب ال( دي إن إيه) ومراحل الكشف عن أسراره.
في الفصل الثالث (عملية البناء الضوئي) ذكر الكثير من المعلومات التي قرأتها لأول مرة، منها أن ارتفاع الأشجار لأعلى راجع لوجود الأكسجين بغزارة في الغلاف الجوي، كما أن اتجاه الحيوانات للزيادة في الحجم له علاقة بنفس الأمر. تحدث في هذا الفصل عن الكلوروفيل ودوره في تنقية الغلاف الجوي من الغازات الضارة و زيادة نسبة الأكسجين وهو ما جعل حياتنا علي الأرض ممكنة.
في الفصل الرابع (الخلية المعقدة) تحدث عن تركيب الخلية الحية و كيفية ظهورها الأول.
في الفصل الخامس (التكاثر الجنسي) ميز بين نوعي التكاثر وفاضل بينهما، ورغم أنه كاد ينتصر للتكاثر اللاجنسي، إلا أنه رفع قدره في النهاية بعد أن ذكر الكثير من عيوب التكاثر اللا جنسي.
الفصل السادس (الحركة) تحدث عن الحركة كاختراع عظيم أسهم إسهاما عظيما في انتشار الحياة كما نراها الآن علي الكوكب. كما تحدث عن أمور فنية في سبب الحركة وكيفية تحويل الطاقة الكيميائية إلي طاقة حركية عن طريق العضلات.
في الفصل السابع (الإبصار) تحدث عن الإبصار كاختراع أسهم هو الآخر في تمكين الكائنات الحية من الانتشار والتنوع علي الأرض، كما تحدث عن تطور العين وأنواع مختلفة من الإدراك البصري يميز مخلوقات عديدة علي الأرض.
في الفصل الثامن (الدم الحار) وهو في نظري من أروع فصول الكتاب تحدث عن أمر مهم جدا وهو الفارق بين الدم الحار والدم البارد للمخلوقات المختلفة، ولماذا تسمى هذه المخلوقات بهذه التصنيفات، كما عرف بالفارق بين النظام الغذائي لكلا النوعين و كيفية الحصول علي الحرارة والتدفئة لكلا النمطين من المخلوقات.
فيا لفصل التاسع تحدث عن الوعي، وفي الفصل العاشر والأخير تحدث عن الموت.
الكتاب صعب وفي الكثير من صفحاته يتحدث عن أمور فنية و علمية دقيقة يصعب فهمها، لكن الكتاب هام جدا لأنه يتطرق إلي الكثير من الموضوعات التي ربما تقرأ فيها لأول مرة.

[Todd Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In “Life Ascending” Nick Lane discusses in what his opinion are the ten most important developments in evolutionary history. They are:
1. The origin of life.
2. DNA
3. Photosynthesis
4. The complex cell
5. Sex
6. Movement
7. Sight
8. Hot blood
9. Consciousness
10. Death
In each section Lane discusses what we know about the topic, then moves into more speculative and cutting edge research. He does a good job explaining the basics, but does not provide enough information to carry the reader through the end of each chapter. As a result, I found myself struggling through the later parts of each section. I liked to be challenged as a reader, but find it a bit frustrating if the book lacks sufficient material to allow for a complete understanding of the topic.

[Veronika Sebechlebská · Rating 4 out of 5]

Na základe genetického rozboru dochovanej kosti sa zistilo, že tím nejbližším žijícím příbuzným T. rexe je obyčejné kuře, těsně následované pštrosem . Keďže som v detstve bola prenasledovaná nejedným kikiríkajúcim diablom, prikláňam sa k tejto teórii.

Vidíme asi 80x lépe něž většina hmyzu, jehož vidění je tak rozostřené, že by se dnes snad už dalo prohlásit i za umění. Made my day, ale veľmi tomu neverím, pretože tie sprosté komáre vždy veľmi dobre vidia, keď na ne útočím.

Inak pre laika je to dosť náročné čítanie, plné ATP, genetického kódovania, hentakých bielkovín, tamtakých enzýmov a všeliakých iných biochemických pojmov a vysvetlení, ktorým som samozrejme nerozumela, čo mi ale nikdy nebránilo nechať sa fascinovať.

[Easha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, because I thought it had an interesting, well thought-out structure and because of its high rating on Goodreads. My main problem with the book was the author's writing style, which came across as arrogant and overly digressive. Unfortunately, this became such a problem for me that I didn't get past the first two chapters.

Maybe I will give this book another go in the future; some of the reviews have given me renewed hope that it gets better!

[Bettie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Ram · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written description of the (in the authors opinion) ten greatest "inventions" of evolution

These include
the origin of life itself,
DNA,
photosynthesis,
the eukaryotes,
sex,
movement,
sight,
warm bloodedness (homeothermy),
consciousness,
and death.

The author is a biochemist and his analysis is very chemical oriented , but still very readable for a layperson. He explains various techniques for discovering the information in a way I could understand.

I admit that in some places I lost him but overall, the read is interesting and educational.


“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 of cell division, the older the man, the worse it gets. As the geneticist James Crow put it, the greatest mutational health hazard in the population is fertile old men.”

“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 erupted. Flowers bloom and beckon, intricate corals hide darting gold fish, vast monsters lurk in black depths, trees reach for the sky, animals buzz and lumber and see. And in the midst of it all, we are moved by the untold mysteries of this creation, we cosmic assemblies of molecules that feel and think and marvel and wonder at how we came to be here.”

[Sne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading Nick Lane I have never had interest in Biology. I didn't even watch Animal Planet. And for a month now I can't stop talking about mitochondria, DNA, evolution, etc.
His books are fascinating. I like the way he structures his statements, his sense of humor, the analogies he makes, the notions that start floating in your head. I like that he obviously likes The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy :)
Somebody here has said that he is speculating too much with unproved theories. May be because I'm not a scientist, but I don't mind. I think that he is giving a fair warning every time he is speculating about something.

[Radiantflux · Rating 5 out of 5]

38th book for 2018.

This book confirms that my opinion that the very best science writing is inevitably done by active and opinionated scientists.

This is a wonderful book that covers everything from the origin of life, though the creation of DNA, photosynthesis, sex, movement, sight, warm bloodness, consciousness and even death.

5-stars.

[Joseph Carrabis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not even sure if this is a popsci book. It had an interesting premise - The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution - but the author’s handling of the subject matter is almost schoolgirl giddy, a kind of “Oh, look how neat this is! Now look how neat this is! And how about this? Isn’t this neat?”
The tone and style of the book put me off and made it tough reading. Others may find it a fine read.

[Murray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pop Sci this isn’t. I imagine that if you’re an evolutionary biochemist then long and very detailed descriptions of mitochondria, obscure proteins and tubulin microtubules (yes really) can be taken in your stride.
For mere mortals, even those with a couple of science degrees, it seems to be completely impenetrable.

It’s a shame, because the subject matter had promise.

[Sajith Kumar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book showcases a chemist’s eye view of evolution, thereby affording another perspective to the charming story of life. In a survey of the history of life on earth, the author comes out with ten events, or rather inventions in his parlance, that thoroughly changed the course of life and diverted it into the highway leading to complex organisms like mammals and men. Development of the complex cell, sight, power of movement and sex constitute a few of the characteristics identified by the author. With his judicious selection of parameters, Nick Lane has presented a well balanced picture of the state of things. Being a scholar of biochemistry who has authored many books and articles on the subject, Lane excels in portraying what he knows best in flowery detail. He was awarded the Biochemical Society Award in 2015 for his achievements and the book itself has bagged many honours.

Picking out ten identifying features from a bewildering array of organisms with infinitely variable features is a herculean task, that can’t be undertaken without a solid structure for the investigation and proper methods of analysis. The author identifies four criteria for selecting the phenomena that is included in the text. The first one is quite obvious – it should be revolutionary in function, taking place on a global scale so as to affect the growth of life as a whole. Another benchmark is that the phenomenon must still be existing. There is indeed no point in singing the praise of a creature that was extinct long ago because it lacked the ability to adapt to changing environment. Evolution by natural selection alone is taken to be the third factor in which cultural selection is ruled out as it came rather late in the history of life on this planet. In a discussion rooted on the basics of emergence of life, anything other than natural selection need not be considered. The final parameter selected by Nick Lane is that the evolutionary development should be iconic. This term is rather vague, even though it is justified in the text. An iconic transformation is bound to be revolutionary too, and vice versa. So, what is the difference between it and the first one? Whatever may be Lane’s arguments to the contrary, readers get an impression that the fourth point is a redundant one.

Secrets behind the origin of life are presented from a chemist’s point of view. One important aspect visible here is the scrapping of Darwin’s famous idea of the ‘primordial soup’, the warm puddle that was thought to be the cradle of life. Darwinists posit that life originated in those primordial pools of warm water in which amino acids and proteins abounded. Lane brings up the idea of under-sea hydrothermal vents as the nursery of life on earth. These vents are the locations of the outpouring of hot metals and minerals from the mantle to sea floor. A few such structures have been studied in detail and the prodigious amount of energy and complex organic molecules detected around the periphery of these vents makes the idea highly plausible. But readers should keep one thing firmly in their minds. Darwin’s suggestion of the warm pool does not constitute an integral part of the theory of evolution, which is silent on the question of the origin of life. What Darwin proposed was a probable mechanism for the interpolation of his theory to the origins of life itself. Changing the warm pool with the hot vent does not in any way affect the applicability of Darwinian evolution, because once life was afoot (in the figurative way, of course), the further course of action proceeded along the evolutionary pathways. There is no confusion here, but the author could have specifically explained this.

The book attempts an overkill on the issue of how eukaryotic cells (having a nucleus inside the cell as opposed to bacteria which don’t possess one) evolved from their more primitive bacterial ancestors. Bacterial body structure is very conservative, we don’t see much change in them even at present since they are supremely adapted to the environment to which they belong. But eukaryotes change rapidly. They were the harbingers of higher life forms. All mammals belong to this family. So, the problem addressed by Lane is the origin of the eukaryotic cell. Evolution by natural selection is the obvious option, but the speed of mutation attested by microbiology is too slow, in fact, so slow that the entire tenure of the earth is not sufficient to cover the development of a nucleus inside the cell. The alternative is a fanciful postulate going by the name of ‘fateful encounter theory’. In a nutshell, when two dissimilar cells come near by chance, one cell gobbles up the other, turning it into its nucleus in the long term. The event is purported to be so fortuitous that it might have occurred only once! Such a remote probability for the origin of all higher forms of life doesn’t augur well for Darwinian evolution. If it had to seek help from a very, very improbable event, how is it going to be functionally different from creation? But on two other occasions, such gobbling up is taken for granted without much nitpicking as in the case of photosynthesizing cells that incorporated cyanobacteria to do their trick with light and ordinary cells accommodating mitochondria for fulfilling their energy demands, even though mitochondria are deemed to be independent bacteria prior to acquiring tenancy inside the cells. Are they too deemed to be fateful encounters? The book doesn’t provide an answer to this vital question.

A thought provoking discussion on the meaning of consciousness and its physical significance is provided. Speculations on ending the exclusion of physical forces and particles in describing mind’s action are intriguing. It may be that a new form of quantum interactions not yet identified is behind the working of the mind. This is definitely a bit forcing the issue, as the appeal to undetected quantum fluctuations to explain a point is the hallmark of charlatanism. Another inspiring description is about aging and death. Even though a bit counter intuitive, Lane identifies death as one of the ten inventions made by evolution in its progress at creating complex life forms. If the author is to be believed, a great deal of research is going on to uncover the secrets of aging and death. Early researchers had identified free radicals and antioxidants as the players in this great game, but later research is more ambivalent on the issue. Leak of free radicals from the cells’ mitochondria is the hot cake now, and a gene has been identified among the Japanese which slows down this process. The healthy consequence is longer and healthier lives for those fortunate enough to have this mutation in their genome. However, the effect of this gene is revealed only much later after sexual maturity and hence there is no selective advantage for them. The author expects widespread improvement in man’s healthy lifespan in around two decades as a result of the study going on in the field. A healthy optimism, indeed!

As the author is a renowned biochemist, the presentation is geared more towards the mechanism of chemical reactions in focus. Emotions, for him, are not exactly the ineffable experience we feel, but the result of a group of molecules combining with others, in the brain. The relevance of the book is attested to by the up to date information available in it. While most of the books in the genre fall short of the year 1980, Lane has included content right after the year 2000 as well. This is the advantage of being a front runner in the field, which the author is. His infatuation with hydrothermal vents in the early part of the book appears to be verging on the intimidating. The physical layout of the book is not very appealing to the reader, with its very small text that is a burden to read. Also, it assumes a good deal of prior understanding of biological concepts to fully appreciate the content. Statements like ‘a vast number of unicellular protists are facultatively sexual’ (p.132) frankly flew way above my head. The book is gifted with a good index and a nice set of illustrations and photographs.

The book is recommended for the serious reader.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do I love this book? Let me count the ways ...

I love Nick Lane's tone, which manages to balance wit and clarity without overusing the analogy button:

Thermodynamics is one of those words best avoided in a book with any pretence to be popular, but it's more engaging if it's seen for what it is: the science of 'desire'. The existence of atoms and molecules is dominated by 'attractions', 'repulsions', 'wants' and 'discharges', to the point that it becomes virtually impossible to write about chemistry without giving in to some sort of randy anthropomorphism. Molecules 'want' to lose or gain electrons; attract opposite charges, repulse similar charges; or cohabit with molecules of similar character. A chemical reaction happens spontaneously if all the molecular partners desire to participate; or they can be pressed to react unwillingly through greater force. And of course some molecules really want to react but find it hard to overcome their innate shyness. A little gentle flirtation might prompt a massive release of lust, a discharge of pure energy. But perhaps I should stop there.

I love him because he blew my little mind. Lane begins with the origins of life, deep in the mineral-rich sea, on alkaline vents on the sea floor. How life on Earth began is still not entirely agreed upon, but Lane has thrown his lot in with biochemists Martin Russell and Mike Russell:

If Martin and Russell are right - and I think they are - [the Last Universal Common Ancestor] was not a free-living cell but a rocky labyrinth of mineral cells, lined with catalytic walls composed of iron, sulphur and nickle, and energised by natural proton gradients. The first life was a porous rock that generated complex molecules and energy, right up to the formation of proteins and DNA itself.

Rocks. We all come from rocks. It's almost too big an idea to hold in your head at one time. (This all causes me to ask why I hadn't wondered where life came from before. I know how planets formed, and beyond that I think I had some hazy notion of 'primordial ooze', which is apparently discredited). With the next chapter, DNA, I was on steadier ground. I was back with some familiar friends - (hello Watson and Crick) and knew what was happening. There's some lovely passages in this chapter too:

Crick pictured messenger RNA just sitting in the cytoplasm with its codons projecting like a sow's nipples, each one ready to bind its transfer RNA like a suckling pig. Eventually all the tRNAs would nestle up, side by side down the full length of the messenger RNA, with their amino acids projecting out like the tails of piglets, ready to be zipped up into a protein.

[It's probably worth noting here that Lane is explaining why Crick's theory was wrong, not right.]

I love the structure of the book. Lane slowly builds up from rocks to DNA to photosynthesis to sex to sight to hot blood to death and consciousness, at each point asking why these things were invented - what evolutionary advantage they offer, and what their histories are (or might be). Each chapter reaches back to the ones before, and often signals developments further within itself. Each is filled with those small details that make you realise that you know nothing - which makes you feel *terrific*. [Sincerely, is there anything better than realising you have years and years and books and books on a fascinating topic ahead of you?].

Sight was the surprise winner chapter for me. Sight - in the form of light-sensitive areas - first appeared in the form of naked retinas, a light sensitive sheet of cells that still appear on some of the creatures, like the swarming shrimp, that live near the vents where life (may have) originally appeared. It is possible that eyes triggered the entire Cambrian explosion, the point when most modern Phyla emerged. We're used to thinking of the lens of the eye as a disk of transparent cells - the tribolite's lens were made of the mineral calcite - another name for calcium carbonate, which in an impure form is limestone and a purer form is chalk. One living creature, the brittlestar, still uses calcite to make its lenses.


Most of all though, I love that Lane shows us the process of science - the areas where things aren't settled, the places with scientists disagree, the ways that personalities can conflict with credibility. He sketches out both theories and the people who devised them. For example - there has been significant debate over whether life originated in 'black smokers' or alkaline vents (mentioned earlier). Günter Wächtershäuser, a German chemist and patent attorney, advanced the black smoker theory, hypothesising that the key materials of life were hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide and iron pyrites:

One scientist, on first reading Wächtershäuser's wok, remarked that it felt like stumbling across a scientific paper that had fallen through a time warp from the end of the twenty-first century.

But is he right? Harsh criticism has been levelled at Wächtershäuser too, in part because he is a genuine revolutionary, overturning long-cherished ideas; in part, because his haughty manner tends to exasperate fellow scientists; and in part, because there are legitimate misgivings about the picture he paints.

Another example, from the chapter on the complex cell:

In the face of little solid evidence, I'd like to raise another gloriously imaginative hypothesis from the ingenious duo we met in Chapter 2, Bill Martin and Eugene Koonin. Their idea has two great merits. It explains why a nucleus should evolve specifically in a chimeric cell, notably one that is half archaea, half bacteria (which, as we've seen, is the most believable origin of the eukaryotic cell itself). And it explains why the nuclei of virtually all eukarytoic cells should be stuffed with DNA coding for nothing, completely unlike bacteria. Even if the idea is wrong, I think it's the kind of thing we ought to be looking for, and it still raises a real problem facing the early eukaryotes that has to be solved somehow. This is the sort of idea that adds magic to science, and I hope it is right.

With the idiotic debates that continue to be pursued around evolution and 'intelligent design', I think it is crucial that society understands that 'gaps' in the evidence, and disagreements among scientists, do not weaken the case for evolution (which should, really, not have to be made). Lane does an elegant and enjoyable job of laying out the current state of research, focused on topics he cares about and finds intriguing, and even though I'm going to have to read the book again in order to fully understand it, I am truly grateful to him for doing so.

[Jindroush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Čtení poměrně hustotěžké, ale výtěžné. Spoustu zastaralých a konfliktních názorů vysvětleno v kontrastu s nejnovějšími objevy a teoriemi. Žádné blesky v prvotní polévce, ale černí kuřáci. Výborně vysvětlené teorie ke vzniku třípísmenného DNA kódu. Snad jedinou výtku bych měl ke zbabělému slovíčkaření v kapitole o "duši", dle mého jsou názory věřících zcela irelevantní pro takovouto knihu.

[المجتبى الوائلي · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب عظيم ويلخص الكثير. والمرء سيحتاج للكثير من المعرفة العلمية الأساسية والتركيز خلال القراءة كي لا يفوته شيء.

[Jonathan Mckay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this much more than Hail Mary.... I guess if I want science better to go straight for the opinionated source.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

One can study the biochemistry of photosynthesis in some detail and be unaware of the different pathways that exist and existed in different organisms, of its effect on the color of the sky, of its effect on the structural components of large plants and animals, and of the peculiarities of its evolutionary origin. Nick Lane gives a brilliant overview of the nature, significance and origin of the 10 greatest inventions of evolution including, the origin of life itself, DNA, photosynthesis, the eukaryotes, sex, movement, sight, warm bloodedness (homeothermy), consciousness, and death. I found the degree of detail to fit well with the text's readability and I was uniformly impressed with the author's knowledge and presentation. The relative low point, for me, was the chapter on consciousness. There is a great deal of interest there, but I think I am a little more radical than the author on this topic; he blows off Dennett with a single paragraph and he ends his discussion of the tragic case of a girl with hydranencephaly by stating that if it is the case that if the roots of consciousness are not to be found in the cerebral cortex, "then the neural transform, from firing to feeling, loses some of its mystique". Yes, that's what Dennett says, and it loses all of its mystique.

[Ioannis Savvas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο Nick Lane είναι βιοχημικός και το βιβλίο του Life Ascending κέρδισε το Royal Society Prize for Science Books για το 2010. Διαβάζοντας πρόσφατα ένα φρικτό βιβλίο εκλαϊκευμένης επιστήμης, η σύγκριση είναι αναπόφευκτη. Ο Nick Lane συνθέτει μια συμφωνία επιστημονικών δεδομένων για να παρουσιάσει ένα καταπληκτικό μουσικό έργο με πρωταγωνιστή την Εξέλιξη. Ο συγγραφέας επιλέγει τις δέκα σημαντικότερες «εφευρέσεις» της Εξέλιξης και συνθέτει δέκα κεφάλαια κλιμακωτά. Βήμα-βήμα ανεβαίνει την εξελικτική πορεία τής ζωής, σε μια ελεγεία της ζώσας ύλης. Δέκα βήματα:

1. η καταγωγή της ζωής
2. DNA
3. φωτοσύνθεση
4. το πολύπλοκο κύτταρο
5. sex (αμφιγονική αναπαραγωγή)
6. κίνηση
7. όραση
8. θερμοαιμία
9. συνείδηση
10. θάνατος

Η σύνθεση καταλήγει σε ένα κρεσέντο τόσο δυνατό και ταυτόχρονα επιβλητικό και όμορφο, που η ιστορία της εξέλιξης μοιάζει απλά αναπόφευκτη.

Ο Nick Lane εκτός από μεγάλος επιστήμονας είναι και ένας σπουδαίος συγγραφέας, ένας ζωγράφος της ζωής πάνω στον πλανήτη, ένας μουσικός συνθέτης της εξέλιξης.

A world without sex is a world without the songs of men and women or birds or frogs, without the flamboyant colours of flowers, without gladiatorial contests, poetry, love or rapture.

…

…the price of immortality is our humanity.

[Kinan Diraneyya · Rating 4 out of 5]

مع أنني التقطت هذا الكتاب بشكل عشوائي من رف كتبنا في المنزل إلا أنني سعيد جدا بما وجدته فيه, يناقش هذا الكتاب ما يسميه في عنوانه "الاختراعات الشعرة العظيمة للتطور" وهي بحق أهم المشكلات التي ستفكر فيها عندما تتأمل في مسألة التطور (تطور العين والتكاثر الجنسي والقدرة على الحركة على سبيل المثال), أحد الأسباب التي دفعتني لتقييم الكتاب بأربعة نجوم بدلا عن خمسة هو وصفه التقني لبعض المسائل التي لم أشعر بأنني معني بها, كما أنا الكثير من التفاصيل موزعة بشكل عشوائي بين الفصول الرئيسية وبين الملحوظات الهامشية في آخر الكتاب, فمثلا قد تواجه قصة (شخصية تماما) حدثت بين عالمين لم تسمع عنهما في حياتك وقد احتلت قلب أحد الفصول, بينما تكون معلومة تطورية مهمة (مثل تخصص عيون الرئيسيات بالقدرة على الفوكسة بخلاف باقي الثديات) ملقاة على الهامش لسبب غير مفهوم.
لكنه يبقى في نهاية المطاف كتابا رائعا يعطي تصورا ممتازا عن حكاية التطور ويفسر كونها نظرية صلبة وراسخة.

[Cassandra Kay Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

The details in this book are fascinating! Lots of fun speculation interwoven with intricate descriptions of various facets of living organisms on an almost chemical/cellular level. This makes it very distinct from other books on evolution as the author literally picks his random top favorite topics and just starts discussing. I listed to this on auido and it kind of felt like a podcast in the manner it was presented. It was really fun and I liked the reader a lot. This is a great one to throw on your audiobook list if you love science, and I am sure the hard copy would be equally as good. It's just a very different approach to a subject that already gets a lot of attention.

[Sheng Peng · Rating 2 out of 5]

For all the topics that are covered in his magnum opus Power Sex Suicide, the author is eloquent as usual. But on other matters on which he is obviously not a true expert, the writing is no different than random musings from a layman. The chapter on Consciousness is so bad that it is verging on philosophical contemplations with the signature incomprehensibleness of writings from that field, and reminds one of hot air from the typical TV talk head babbling on a random subject. To have written this book after the magnificent Power book aforementioned is just shameful.