What Is Life?: Five Great Ideas in Biology by Paul Nurse (PDF)

Description

The Nobel Prize–winning scientist’s elegant explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today.The renowned biologist Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In What Is Life?, he takes up the challenge of describing what it means to be alive in a way that every reader can understand.It is a shared journey of discovery; step-by-step Nurse illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology—the Cell, the Gene, Evolution by Natural Selection, Life as Chemistry, and Life as Information. He introduces the scientists who made the most important advances, and, using his personal experiences in and out of the lab, he shares with us the challenges, the lucky breaks, and the thrilling eureka moments of discovery.Nurse writes with delight at life’s richness and with a sense of the urgent role of biology in our time. To survive the challenges that face us all today—climate change, pandemic, loss of biodiversity and food security—it is vital that we all understand what life is.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a short book of 143 pages, well-written, reads fast, and it is extremely illuminating. This book is written for a layperson and should interest readers interested in the biological and philosophical nature of life. Erwin Schrodinger’s book with the same title published in 1944, generated profound thoughts, and this book takes us to the next level as more knowledge is available now.A living cell has unique properties with complex biochemical mechanisms for its independent existence, generating energy (metabolism), and reproduction. How does chemistry give rise to biology? What could have led the first replicating molecules up such a path? The author proposes five unique ideas for life to emerge in the cosmos. With a framework of laws of physics operating in cosmos, the physical structure of a cell, the biomolecule that holds the genetic information (hereditary), biological evolution by natural selection, well-coordinated biochemical reactions and the information contained in a biological cell. The ability of life to evolve through natural selection and a hereditary system that exhibits variability is essential for organisms. Cells must be bounded, physical entities, separated from, but in communication with their environments. These characteristics of biological life invoke a physicality of life that excludes computer programs (artificial intelligence), and cultural entities like economy, technology, and cities which also evolve but not the same as a living cell.Viruses cycle between being alive, when chemically active and reproducing in host cells, and not being alive when existing as chemically inert viruses outside a cell. The gut microbes exist independently in humans and other animals that affect the physiology and neurobiology of their hosts. The mitochondria that produce cellular energy were entirely separate bacteria but entered the living cell to permanently reside during the biological evolution. Most primitive microscopic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), photosynthesize and capture their own nitrogen, and the archaea get all their energy and chemical raw materials from volcanically active hydrothermal vents deep below on the seafloor. All living organisms, to various degrees, are interdependent with their environment and other species.The way life couples complex polymer chemistry with linear information storage is a compelling principle. But one thing that the author doesn’t consider is consciousness and how it operates in life forms. Erwin Schrodinger argued in his book that an undiscovered physical law would explain life completely. That was a time when little was known about biological consciousness. Consciousness is not found in physics formulas but becomes necessary in the interpretation of quantum reality. The consciousness and spacetime are emerging phenomenon when matter and energy act according to the laws of physics. But the desire (consciousness) to survive, reproduce and avoid danger for its own existence operates in most primitive life forms. In fact, some plant biologists argue that plants also have consciousness despite the fact that they don’t have a brain or network of neurons (nervous system). There are academic journals that publishes biological papers in the field of plant neurobiology and plant cell communication

⭐2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Paul Nurse is an excellent writer & on the cutting edge of wrestling with what is still, after 3000 years, perhaps the single most important question in biology: ” What is life?” The 5 ideas Paul expounds are:1. The cell as the atom of biology — every cell is a life form in it’s own right.2. The Gene — Your genes are made of DNA. Each of your chromosomes has at its core a single, unbroken molecule of DNA. These can be extremely long and each can contain hundreds or even thousands of genes arranged in a chain, one after another. Human chromosome number 2, for example, contains a string of over 1,300 different genes, and if you stretched that piece of DNA out, it would measure more than 8 cm in length. This leads to the extraordinary statistic that, together, the 46 chromosomes in each of your tiny cells would add up to more than two metres of DNA. Through some miracle of packing, it all fits into a cell that measures no more than a few thousandths of a millimetre across. What is more, if you could somehow join together and then stretch out all the DNA coiled up inside your body’s several trillion cells into a single, slender thread, it’d be about 20 billion kilometres long. That’s long enough to stretch from Earth to the sun and back sixty-five times!3. Evolution by natural selection4. Life as Chemistry5. Life as informationThen the author goes on to share some other thoughts & opinions, such as , he is in favor of Genetically Modifying crops.

⭐“What is Life” is an easy-to-read story of cell biology and it’s role in genetics. It also connects the life of our cells with cells of primitive life forms created a billion years ago! I’m a scientist with a passing interest in biology. Dr. Nurse’s book was a great review of the topics I’d recently learned about in undergraduate college-level courses. I think it would be a useful book for younger students new to biology. I particularly enjoyed the 5th section on Life as Information, how input-output feedback operates at each of the 4 levels of biology and chemistry discussed earlier. The feedback mechanism keeps the system in a dynamic equilibrium. This constant exchange of information suggests that living things ‘act’ with a sense of purpose. This isn’t ‘entelechy;’ rather, its what feedback systems do, like the spinning mechanical valve invented by Watts as a governor in a steam engine. My main complaints is that the book has no Index. An index is very helpful to find topics after one reads the book. On the other hand, if you have the Kindle version, it’s search engine makes it easy to find topics (but isn’t as thorough as an Index). Also, diagrams would have been helpful. Perhaps Dr. Nurse will add these in a 2nd edition.

⭐This exposition by Sir Paul Nurse is concise and understandable. Nobody with an interest in the topic will be disappointed. My only hope for a future edition is that some of the sections could be elucidated with illustrations.

⭐Some people are looking for a meaning of life. However, scientists are still puzzled by a question: What is life? For biologists it became the quest for a meaning of life.

⭐Perfect book to deliver the essential concept and understand what is life from the biological and philosophical point of view… Nurse dare speaking of purpose without falling into bigotry which is much appreciated

⭐Lire ca, c’est un plezier!

⭐

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