blodgin

run don't walk... ________________________________________________________________

...and rush over to the bookstore and plunk down whatever it takes to read the most significant work produced on Life and the origins of it since the days of Darwin himself. The book is entitled POWER, SEX, AND SUICIDE: mitochondria and the meaning of life (Oxford Univ Press, Oct 2006)...I shall order my copy just as soon as I am paid by my employer I assure you. (I do not buy many books...and the ones I do buy I read, re-read and one thousand per cent absorb...Faulkner, Wolfe, Chatwin, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Baldwin,and now that I think about it Joan Didion)...

Shield your eyes now if you dislike thinking and skip this quote from an excellent review of this new scientific masterpiece...

He explores the hypothesis that the critical moment in the development of the eukaryotic cell, and hence multicellular life, and ultimately man himself, was the union of two cells, one of which became subservient to the other as the ancestral mitochondrion.

As a Darwinian evolutionist, the author tells a good tale: "Once upon a time a methanogen and -proteobacterium lived side-by-side in the ocean where oxygen was scarce..." and there are more twists and turns than in an average detective story, all plausible and potentially possible. Those on the creationist or grand design side of the fence will be consoled by the fact that although Nick Lane implies the evolution of humanity or the human consciousness he cannot believe that bacteria will ever "ascend the smooth ramp to sentience, or anywhere much beyond slime."

Struggling clinical academics will be encouraged by the historical perspective in this book. For example, Peter Mitchell, who won the Nobel prize for chemistry for his description of the mitochondrial proton pump, was a reclusive who set up his own laboratory in an old country house in Corn-wall, funding some of his research from the proceeds of a dairy herd. Charles MacMann, who described the cytochromes, was a practising clinician who worked in a small laboratory in the hay loft over his stables, carrying out research in his spare time

See I told you so, run, right now and go find this book...adam and eve turn out to have been mitochondrial elements outside the walled city of the nucleus, isn't that right?

posted by wrangler steve at Friday, October 27, 2006 >1 comments

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