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Explores the possibilities of how life began on Earth four billion years ago
"The origin of life may have happened an inconceivably long time ago, but scientists like David Deamer are making major advances in understanding how the first microbes began to seethe on our planet, ultimately giving rise to all species alive today. In First Life, Deamer offers a delightful synthesis of research into life's dawn with his own vision for how it came to be."—Carl Zimmer, author of The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution "No living scientist has had a greater impact on our understanding of life’s origins than Dave Deamer. In First Life, his remarkably engaging, constantly lucid, and delightfully personal narrative, Deamer takes us behind the scenes of origins researc...
It seems likely that scientists will someday discover how life can emerge on habitable planets like the early Earth and Mars. In Origin of Life: What Everyone Needs to Know(R), David W. Deamer has written a comprehensive guide to the origin of life that is organized in three sections. The first section addresses questions such as: Where do the atoms of life come from? How old is Earth? What was the Earth like before life began? Where does water come from? After each question is answered, there is a follow-up: How do we know? This expands the horizon of the book, explaining how scientists reach conclusions and why we can trust these answers. The second section describes how certain organic mo...
Genetics professor Michelle Murphy loses her husband under mysterious circumstances and without warning, while their brilliant eight year old daughter Avalon, adopted in Kazakhstan, stubbornly believes she is a mutant. As if this were not enough she soon finds herself thrown into the middle of a quickly thickening plot, where the legacy of Genghis Khan meets the hunt for FOXP5, a genetic transcription factor that could herald the dawn of new human species. Initially caught helplessly between well-meaning fellow scientists, the government and more sinister agents, Michelle, with the help of a host of unlikely heroes, eventually takes control and finds the courage to confront the decision of whether to save human lives or humanity. The scientific and technical aspects underlying the plot - in particular aspects of FOX proteins, genetic mutations, viruses and cancer as well as the relation between intelligence and cortical complexity - are introduced and discussed by the authors in an extensive non-technical appendix.
This is an introductory text and laboratory manual to be used primarily in undergraduate courses. It is also useful for graduate students and research scientists who require an introduction to the theory and methods of nanopore sequencing. The book has clear explanations of the principles of this emerging technology, together with instructional material written by experts that describes how to use a MinION nanopore instrument for sequencing in research or the classroom.At Harvard University the book serves as a textbook and lab manual for a university laboratory course designed to intensify the intellectual experience of incoming undergraduates while exploring biology as a field of concentra...
Membrane permeability is fundamental to all cell biology and subcellular biology. The cell exists as a closed unit. Import and export depend upon a number of sophisticated mechanisms, such as active transport, endocytosis, exocytosis, and passive diffusion. These systems are critical for the normal housekeeping physiological functions. However, access to the cell is also taken advantage of by toxic microbes (such as cholera or ptomaine) and when designing drugs. Ernest Overton, one of the pioneers in lipid membrane research, put forward the first comprehensive theory of lipid membrane structure. His most quoted paper on the osmotic properties of cells laid the foundation for the modern conce...
How life originated from the inanimate mixture of organic and inorganic compounds on the priomordial earth remains one of the great unknowns in science. This origin of life, or abiogenesis, continues to be examined in the context of the conditions and materials required for natural life to have begun on Earth both theoretically and experimentally. This book provides a broad but in-depth analysis of the latest discoveries in prebiotic chemsitry from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale; utilising experimental insight to provide a bottom up approach to plausibly explaining how life arose. With contributions from global leaders, this book is an ideal reference for postgraduate students and a single source of comprehensive information on the latest technical and theoretical advancements for researchers in a variety of fields from astrochemistry and astrophysics to organic chemistry and evolution.
A study of how nanotechnology can be used in disease detection and treatment. It shows how nanotechnology offers sensitive tools for the early detection of cancer, discussing the use of lasers to measure optical deformability in cancer cells, and therapeutics through the use of nanomaterials.
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The first comprehensive general resource on state-of-the-art protocell research, describing current approaches to making new forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. Protocells offers a comprehensive resource on current attempts to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. These minimal versions of cells, known as protocells, are entities with lifelike properties created from nonliving materials, and the book provides in-depth investigations of processes at the interface between nonliving and living matter. Chapters by experts in the field put this state-of-the-art research in the context of theory, laboratory work, and computer simulations on the components and proper...