About Life

This book uses modern biological knowledge to tackle the question of what distinguishes living organisms from the non-living world. The authors first draw on recent advances in cell and molecular biology to develop an account of the living state that applies to all organisms (and only to organisms). This account is then used to explore questions about evolution, the origin of life, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The novel approach taken by this book to issues in biology will interest and be accessible to both the general reader as well as students and specialists in the field.

ISBN 1402054173   Pages 252 ISBN13 9781402054174 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Springer-Verlag New York Inc.   Weight (grammes) 562 Imprint Springer-Verlag New York Inc.   Published in New York, NY Format Hardback   Height (mm) 235 Publication date 23 Jan 2007   Width (mm) 155 Library of Congress 2007416677   Spine width (mm) 15 DEWEY 570   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

1		Introduction		1
2		Ingredients of the simplest cells (prokaryotes and the sizes of their contents)		7
3		Bigger cells (eukaryotic cells and their contents)		17
4		Hives of industry (a survey of intermediary metabolism)		29
5		Delights of transport (how the cell's contents are moved around)		39
6		As if standing still (cellular homeostasis and regulatory processes)		49
7		Internal state and gene expression (transcription and its control)		57
8		Sustaining and changing the internal state (the interrelationship between gene expression and the cell's current composition and functional state)		67
9		Responding to the environment (signal processing, gene expression and internal state)		79
10		The living state (a characterization of 'life')		91
11		Stability and change in DNA (how genes can be altered)		105
12		The spice of life (diversity, natural selection and symbiosis)		117
13		Curriculum vitae (an outline history of life on earth)		131
14		The origin of life (some major ideas and unanswered questions)		147
15		Other worlds (the possibility of extraterrestrial life)		163
16		Intelligent behaviour and brains (the biological meaning of "intelligence")		179
17		Human evolution (human intelligence and the question of human uniqueness)		195
18		Cells, brains and computers : towards a characterisation of mind		209

From the reviews: I have read some of the chapters and I am most impressed. It is well written, scholarly and deals with the subject in "4-D" i.e. not as we know it now but as knowledge developed in time. For me, who has lived through the development of the subject since the late 1960s and reviewed the literature as far back as Hippocrates, it was like reading a novel that I could not put down. Prof. A Nicolaides MS FRCS "This delightfully written book addresses major questions and some of the biggest ideas in biology today. ! The book is moderately well-illustrated with photomicrographs and line drawings ! . The book includes numerous insightful analogies and covers somewhat offbeat topics that an instructor could easily adapt to enliven classroom presentations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above." (P. E. Hertz, CHOICE, Vol. 45 (2), 2007)

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