Can't Live Without 'Em: The Logic and Implications of "Essential" Genes

In a classic scene near the end of Jules Verne's Around The World in 80 Days, Phileas Fogg buys the Henrietta, the steamship on which he is racing across the Atlantic. His first order as new owner is to tell the captain, "Have the interior seats, frames, and bunks pulled down, and burn them" -- all this to maintain pressure in the ship's boiler. Over the next two days, everything else nonessential and flammable on the Henrietta is fed into the boiler, until the ship is "only a flat...