45 quotes
I would expect, maybe 900 times out of a thousand that life would be organized in a similar way to life here.
Nick Lane (2021)
Protocells of some sort [lie between a hydrothermal vent system and a virus] in my mind.
Nick Lane (2021)
I do like this quote from Simon Conway Morris that if the aliens call then don't pick up the phone.
Nick Lane (2021)
There has to be thermodynamic underpinnings for it, otherwise it wouldn't happen.
Nick Lane (2021)
The genetic code is riddled with redundancy.
Transformer (2022)
I personally would love to know that answer, even if my own views on the subject turn out to be completely wrong.
Nick Lane (2021)
For whatever reasons it never evolved. I would say the reason was that you need mitochondria to get that large and complex in the first place.
Nick Lane (2021)
If the Krebs cycle is ordained by thermodynamics, then it should take place spontaneously in some suitably propitious envirnonment, even in the absence of genes.
Transformer (2022)
Proteins are the crowning glory of life.
Power, Sex, Suicide (2005)
How common are the right types of light sensitive pigment? They're chemically not so straight forward.
Nick Lane (2021)
It's a grand question. It would be wonderful to know the answer.
Nick Lane (2021)
The sequence of letters in a gene specifies the sequence of amino acids in a protein.
Power, Sex, Suicide (2005)
Without programmed cell death, the bonds that bind cells in complex multicellular organisms might never have ebvolved.
Power, Sex, Suicide (2005)
I said you [bacteria] are not morphologically complex, you are biochemically awesome.
Nick Lane (2021)
This book will explore how the flow of energy and matter structures the evolution of life and even genetic information.
Transformer (2022)
I wouldn't expect populations of bacteria to give rise, without endosymbiosis, to complex morphology and the kind of intelligence that we have, elsewhere.
Nick Lane (2021)
This is changing with the discovery of all these giant viruses, but as a rule you need some form of metabolism to convert the environment into copies of yourself.
Nick Lane (2021)
The plastids were acquired by a eukaryotic cell that was already a fully fledged eukaryotic cell.
Nick Lane (2021)
It seems to add in a layer of unnecessary complexity. So I much prefer to get straight into organic chemistry, and straight into metabolism as we know it.
Nick Lane (2021)
It is the movement that creates the form.
Transformer (2022)