The vital question
A biochemist, building on the pillars of evolutionary theory and drawing on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and genes, argues that the evolution of multicellular life was the result of a single event.
Stats for nerds
66recommend
135mentions
84people
2015–2026years
74% recommend25% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I read Lane's The Vital Question this year and enjoyed it quite a bit. If you've read both, would you compare them for me?
- I havent read PSS but I loved The Vital Question and Transformer. It was so much better than a book on the Krebs cycle had any business being. I probably liked VQ better though.
- If you’re interested in this area I highly recommend “The Vital Question” by Nick Lane if you haven’t read it.
The TLDR of his theory is that life originated in alkaline hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, where natural energy gradients could have driven primitive metabolic reactions before the development of DNA.
Book goes into a lot of layperson-accessible detail.
- I really have no idea, but if that’s a topic that interests you I can wholeheartedly recommend Nick Lane’s “The Vital Question”.
- I've read part of Nick Lane's other book, The Vital Question, cannot comment on this new one; TL;DR competent biochemist (from complete amateur standpoint at any rate), excellent science communicator; you can watch some of his talks online. e.g. the one linked on this new book's page is good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBiIDwBOqQA
He's really fascinated by the overall transformation process of inorganic matter -> organic matter, a sort of scientific fixation - which is always enjoyable when it's done by a competent scientist - and it's really captivating stuff. (The fact I haven't finished his previous book has nothing to do with the book material itself, if anything it really captivated me; it's just my not-amazing new habit of not finishing books...)
- Context: I've read this and The Vital Question and watched several interviews with Nick Lane, so a lot of his ideas have blended together in my mind. A lot of the detail in this book went over my head, but it was well written enough to overcome my shortcoming in biochemistry. Similar in depth to Siddhartha Mukherjee's Song of the Cell and The Gene.
This book was a fascinating walk through evolutionary history and the way that different organisms handle energy, and how earlier, less efficient metabolic paths were limited but sufficient to bootstrap the much more efficient and flexible Kreb's cycle. I remember the term and the loop diagram from high school biology, but to actually dive into the elegant chemical pathways felt like discovering the rocket equation or the path from radioactivity to atomic bombs. If you're at all interested in Biology or Chemistry, I highly recommend this book.
