What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology

by Ed Regis

Overview

Erwin Schrödinger's 1944 classic What Is Life? is a small book that occupies a large place among the great written works of the twentieth century. It is said that it helped launch the modern revolution in biology and genetics, and inspired a generation of scientists, including Watson and Crick, to explore the riddle of life itself.

Now, more than sixty years later, science writer Ed Regis offers an intriguing look at where this quest stands today. Regis ranges widely here, illuminating many diverse efforts to solve one of science's great mysteries. He examines the genesis of Schrödinger's great book—which first debuted as three public lectures in Dublin—and details the fantastic reception his ideas received, both in Europe and America. Regis also introduces us to the work of a remarkable group of scientists who are attempting literally to create life from scratch, starting with molecular components that they hope to assemble into the world's first synthetic living cell. The book also examines how scientists have unlocked the "three secrets of life," describes the key role played by ATP ("the ultimate driving force of all life"), and outlines the many attempts to explain how life first arose on earth, a puzzle that has given birth to a wide range of theories (which Francis Crick dismissed as "too much speculation running after too few facts"), from the primordial sandwich theory, to the theory that life arose in clay, in deep-sea vents, or in oily bubbles at the seashore, right up to Freeman Dyson's "theory of double origins."
Written in a lively and accessible style, and bringing together a wide range of cutting-edge research, What is Life? makes an illuminating contribution to this ancient and ever-fascinating debate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195383416
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ed Regis is a full-time science writer, contributing to Scientific American, Harper's Magazine, Wired, Discover, and The New York Times, among other publications. He is the author of several books, including The Biology of Doom.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Second CreationOne: Birth of a CellTwo: SchrodingerThree: Unlocking the Secrets of LifeFour: The Fiftieth-Anniversary Coronation and DismissalFive : ATP and the Meaning of LifeSix: OriginsSeven: The Spandrels of San MarcoEight: The Twilight ZoneNine: The Synthetic Cell Turing TestTen: What Is Life?Notes, Bibliography, Acknowledgments, Index

What People are Saying About This

Ed Regis is always a careful researcher, always an independent thinker. In this subversive little book, he shows that the biggest of big questions is still worth asking-more urgently now than ever. --David Quammen

Elegant, simple, clear, beautifully written. Regis takes up where Erwin Schrödinger left off and tackles the ultimate mystery of biology. This book is a scrumptious gem. --Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

A comprehensive and elegant analysis of the physical basis of life: an up-to-date successor to Schrödinger's 1944 book. --Marvin Minsky, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, M.I.T., and author of The Emotion Machine

Reading Group Guide

Questions for Discussion
1. Chapter one, "Birth of a Cell," describes Norman Packard's realization that funding for far-fetched projects was easier to obtain in Europe than in the United States. How do cultural distinctions between Europe and the United States influence the ways in which research and development are supported? What rules should govern the intersection of commerce and science?

2. What similarities and differences did you observe when comparing John McCaskill's microfluidic chips and human cells that develop organically?

3. What revolutionary perspective was embedded in Schrödinger's proposal that genes were messages written in code? What makes the concept of a coded "language" as the basis for molecular biology, "even today … a radical, almost fantastic notion," as the author describes it in chapter two?

4. "Unlocking the Three Secrets of Life" reminds us of the common fallacies "that DNA is a protein, that Watson and Crick discovered it, and that they did so in 1952." What accounts for the lack of popular knowledge about Friedrich Miescher's research on leukocytes, and the discoveries of such twentieth-century biologists as Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty? Does contemporary society require its scholars to be media savvy? What is the best way to bridge popular and scientific communities?

5. Did Schrödinger's interest in mysticism refute or enhance his scientific claims? Does the ideal of free will mesh with scientific doctrines? How did you react to his assertion (expressed in the opening paragraphs of chapter four) that there is God, or the potential for God, in every conscious mind?

6. How did chapter five change your understanding of metabolism and the cyclical nature of nature itself? What did you discover about the notion of energy expressed in the Krebs cycle?

7. What did you discover in chapter six, "Origins," regarding the relationship between religious beliefs and scientific beliefs among early researchers? How did Pasteur's Catholicism influence his attitude toward matter's ability to organize itself? Were you surprised to see Darwin quoted as stating that life had been "breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one"?

8. The analogy of "The Spandrels of San Marco" was used by Gould and Lewontin to assert that not everything is an adaptation. Discuss the scientific turning point that is illuminated by this architectural metaphor, in which the spandrels are not designed to serve a specific purpose but instead simply arise as a byproduct. How could this approach-looking beyond design or adaptation-resolve intriguing quirks and mysteries you have observed about the natural world?

9. What is your explanation of self-sacrificial altruism in animals (human and otherwise)? Would you characterize the people in your life as altruistic?

10. Chapter eight, "The Twilight Zone," addresses the issue of synthetic biology, in which an organism's natural DNA may be partially replaced by one or more DNA sequences produced in a laboratory. At what point (if any) does such experimentation become unethical? How will the power of private-sector humanitarian organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, affect these debates?

11. In response to Niels Bohr's wry statement that "prediction is very difficult, especially about the future," discuss what the future may hold for the realm of biomedicine, technology, and other innovative fields. In one hundred years, what breakthroughs will surpass artificial hearts and the Internet?

12. What is your answer to the question posed at the end of chapter nine, "The Synthetic Cell Turing Test, " regarding the creation of artificial chemical cells: "Are the creators, the scientists involved, 'playing God?'" In the realms of medicine, agriculture, and beyond, what does it mean to "play God," and what is the best way to weigh benefits versus philosophical and physical dangers?

13. How do you personally answer the book's title question? Ultimately, how should we define "life"? What can we learn about ourselves and about the world around us simply by exploring the question?

Editorial Reviews

"Elegant, simple, clear, beautifully written. Regis takes up where Erwin Schrödinger left off and tackles the ultimate mystery of biology. This book is a scrumptious gem." — Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

"Ed Regis is always a careful researcher, always an independent thinker. In this subversive litte book, he shows that the biggest of big questions is still worth asking - more urgently now than ever." — David Quammen

"Clearly written and entirely accessible to those without any science background...a delightful and informative introduction."—The Quarterly Review of Biology

From the Publisher

As scientists come closer to creating artificial life, the very definition of life is ever more elusive. Science writer Regis (The Biology of Doom) tackles this large issue and more in a book that never quite finds its focus. By selecting the same title as Nobel laureate Erwin Schrodinger's 1945 classic and Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan's 2000 offering, Regis self-consciously situates his book as a response to theirs. He is, however, no more successful than they were in answering the central question, though he proposes cell metabolism as the best definition we currently have. Regis discusses current attempts to use new techniques to create entities that could be considered living, but he fails to tell a compelling story about either the progress being made or the medical implications of these efforts. Instead, he heads off on several well-traveled tangents presenting relatively simple explanations of how we've come to our understanding of DNA, basic metabolic pathways and evolutionary biology. Although he touches on the fact that being able to distinguish animate from inanimate entities is of critical philosophical importance for debates over such issues as abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia, he never does more than scratch the surface of any of these topics. (Apr.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

This slim volume by agile science writer Regis (The Biology of Doom ) reminds you how exciting and provocative science can be, as the author pares down the answer to the title's question to the ability to metabolize, reproduce, and evolve. Regis introduces scientists who are synthesizing artificial protocells, which are the building blocks for creating life. Framing this view of synthetic biology are spirited chapters on the discovery of the Krebs cycle, nucleic acids, the idea of hereditary coding, its structure in DNA's double helix, and the role of RNA. Pointedly, What Is Life? echoes the title of Erwin Schrödinger's seminal 1945 book that challenged thinking of the time and, as Regis writes, "launched a thousand geneticists on to their careers, including Maurice Wilkins, James Watson, and Francis Crick." Occasionally, Regis's language strikes a wrong note, such as an awkward "As if!"comment on a questionable experimental supposition, but he stays on point and presents big concepts clearly and concisely. A book that could spark young minds toward a career in science. Recommended for public and undergraduate libraries.-Michal Strutin, Santa Clara Univ. Lib., CA

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Veteran science writer Regis (The Info Mesa: Science, Business, and New Age Alchemy on the Santa Fe Plateau, 2003, etc.) explores the mechanisms of life and the latest attempts to reproduce them in the lab. This slim book shares the title of an even slimmer 1944 classic by Nobel laureate Erwin Schrodinger. The Austrian physicist predicted that life, often viewed as an inexplicable phenomenon, obeyed scientific laws no different from those in chemistry and physics. Researchers proved him right almost immediately, and Regis delivers clear descriptions of the avalanche of breakthroughs that launched the modern field of biology. He begins at the beginning with the cheerful news that life may not be the wildly improbable chance combination of elements in the primordial soup that traditional texts depict, but rather an inevitable, natural self-organizing principle that applies as soon as a planet cools. Once alive, every species must evolve, reproduce and metabolize, and even educated readers will learn from Regis's account of the icons who opened up these fields-Darwin for evolution, Mendel in genetics, 1953 Nobel laureate Hans Adolf Krebs, "the first hero of metabolism"-and their followers. Having provided the groundwork, Regis describes cutting-edge scientists working to produce purely synthetic life. This is not science fiction, he assures us, but research performed by mainstream academics, as well as a few scientists financed by private investors who intend to reap financial rewards from their creations. All life takes place in cells surrounded by a complex wall made of fatty acids. Simple fatty acid walls are not hard to make, and scientists are making them. The innumerable metabolicreactions of life occur within cells, but these reactions are now happening inside laboratory "protocells," although they require external life-support to provide nutrients. As for reproduction, researchers are working with artificial versions of DNA that can duplicate themselves. Lucid and exciting.

Kirkus Reviews