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For anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book, "The Vital Question" by Nick Lane. The book dives deep into the fundamental requirements for l

For anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book, "The Vital Question" by Nick Lane. The book dives deep into the fundamental requirements for life, and why just the simple presence of amino acids does not lead to life. He develops a reasonable timeline for how inorganic chemicals can lead to living cells, in what conditions and even theorizes some "universal" principles of how life would look like on other planets, if it exists.

kashyapc 7y ago
Yes to Nick Lane and "The Vital Question". However, as excellent as Laine is at explaining, after the first 100 pages or so, the book gets quite technical (necessarily so). Unless your biochemistry is reasonably good, it is suggested (by biochemists themselves[1]) to first read his other book, 'Life Ascending'[2], which lays out the ground work for the deep dive into "hydrothermal vents", a key topic in 'The Vital Question'. [1] As shared here on HN before: When I was reading the book on a plane, a seasoned biologist happened to be sitting next to me. When I said that it's the first book of Nick Lane that I picked up, he said: "I'd rather suggest you to pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and then get back to The Vital Question." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714115 [2] http://nick-lane.net/books/life-ascending-the-ten-great-inventions-of-evolution/ http://nick-lane.net/books/life-ascending-the-ten-great-inve...
- jcims 7y ago
  How far along do these books make it in the evolutionary process? I've been reading up on the mechanisms behind how cancer works (and how we try to fight it) recently, and it has unveiled a level of complexity and specificity that I had no idea existed. It almost doesn't compute how these systems have evolved through pure chance in the time-frames that we are talking about.
  - sfkdjf9j3j 7y ago
    Billions of years, but that's probably not far enough for you. The Vital Question is about the origin of eukaryotic cells.
    - jcims 7y ago
      Actually that would help for me. One of the early walls in the evolutionary curve would appear to be DNA replication. The level of complexity in the associated protein/enzyme machinery is one of those 'weird things' to me that I don't really understand. Will take a look, thank you. Edit: Some context, a 'realistic' animation of the DNA replication process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6f3ZbKaL7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6f3ZbKaL7A
      - raz32dust 7y ago
        The Vital question doesn't delve into the DNA replication part of it as far as I remember. It focuses more on the initial conditions needed for the living cell machinery to bootstrap, and the physical constraints that are necessary or need to be overcome to achieve life, and kind of glosses over the genetics part. I myself wondered about this after reading the book, and the best resource I could find was this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/
  - kashyapc 7y ago
    It goes into a lot of detail about how complex life arose through the "deadly rise" of 'eukaryotes'. (All complex life forms, "including plants, animals, fungi, algae and protists such as the amoeba, are made of eukaryotic cells.) So the timeframe is indeed "billions of years", as noted below.

kashyapc 7y ago

Yes to Nick Lane and "The Vital Question". However, as excellent as Laine is at explaining, after the first 100 pages or so, the book gets quite technical (necessarily so). Unless your biochemistry is reasonably good, it is suggested (by biochemists themselves[1]) to first read his other book, 'Life Ascending'[2], which lays out the ground work for the deep dive into "hydrothermal vents", a key topic in 'The Vital Question'. [1] As shared here on HN before: When I was reading the book on a plane, a seasoned biologist happened to be sitting next to me. When I said that it's the first book of Nick Lane that I picked up, he said: "I'd rather suggest you to pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and then get back to The Vital Question." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714115 [2] http://nick-lane.net/books/life-ascending-the-ten-great-inventions-of-evolution/ http://nick-lane.net/books/life-ascending-the-ten-great-inve...

jcims 7y ago
How far along do these books make it in the evolutionary process? I've been reading up on the mechanisms behind how cancer works (and how we try to fight it) recently, and it has unveiled a level of complexity and specificity that I had no idea existed. It almost doesn't compute how these systems have evolved through pure chance in the time-frames that we are talking about.
- sfkdjf9j3j 7y ago
  Billions of years, but that's probably not far enough for you. The Vital Question is about the origin of eukaryotic cells.
  - jcims 7y ago
    Actually that would help for me. One of the early walls in the evolutionary curve would appear to be DNA replication. The level of complexity in the associated protein/enzyme machinery is one of those 'weird things' to me that I don't really understand. Will take a look, thank you. Edit: Some context, a 'realistic' animation of the DNA replication process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6f3ZbKaL7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6f3ZbKaL7A
    - raz32dust 7y ago
      The Vital question doesn't delve into the DNA replication part of it as far as I remember. It focuses more on the initial conditions needed for the living cell machinery to bootstrap, and the physical constraints that are necessary or need to be overcome to achieve life, and kind of glosses over the genetics part. I myself wondered about this after reading the book, and the best resource I could find was this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/
- kashyapc 7y ago
  It goes into a lot of detail about how complex life arose through the "deadly rise" of 'eukaryotes'. (All complex life forms, "including plants, animals, fungi, algae and protists such as the amoeba, are made of eukaryotic cells.) So the timeframe is indeed "billions of years", as noted below.