Skip to content

Quotes from Nick Lane — Nick Lane

b. 1967

← All quotes by Nick Lane

30 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)

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)

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)

I said you [bacteria] are not morphologically complex, you are biochemically awesome.

Nick Lane (2021)

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)

I wouldn't hesitate to call it [parasitism] a definition of life... [L]ife as a rule is parasitic on its environment, and the level of parasitism depends on the sophistication of the environment.

Nick Lane (2021)

If we, meaning humans now... find life somewhere else, most people would be disappointed if it turned out only to be bacteria.

Nick Lane (2021)

Yes I do think that... [viruses] are alive, not for the obvious reasons.

Nick Lane (2021)

No, we're not alone [in the universe]. We share it with lots of friendly bacteria [and this includes bacteria on other planets].

Nick Lane (2021)

Now, if we get to complex life and we get beyond organic life forms into artificial intelligence, post-biological, then anything goes and maybe that's what we should be looking for.

Nick Lane (2021)

Now it's possible to have some kind of protocell with some form of metabolism without any genetic heredity. It's possible in principle. Is it alive?

Nick Lane (2021)

It does seem to me, from our experience of life on earth that photosynthesis allows you to... step up, by probably orders of magnitude in just how much life can take over a planet.

Nick Lane (2021)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Nick Lane (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.