The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?

by Nick Lane

there are ten times as many viruses, waiting for their moment, as there are bacteria.

Number of viruses

The question boils down to two parts: why do all living cells use redox chemistry as a source of free energy? And why do all cells conserve this energy in the form of proton gradients over membranes? At a more fundamental level, these questions are: why electrons, and why protons?

The question

One day it may be possible to predict the properties of life anywhere in the universe from the chemical composition of the cosmos.

Predict properties of life from chemistry

‘By the 1990s it was clear that antioxidants are not a panacea for ageing and disease, and only fringe medicine still peddles this notion.’

Antioxidants

The evolution of two sexes, the germline–soma distinction, programmed cell death, mosaic mitochondria, and the trade-offs between aerobic fitness and fertility, adaptability and disease, ageing and death, all these traits emerge, predictably, from the starting point that is a cell within a cell.

Evolution