Sunday, September 30, 2018

Book Review: "What is Life?" by Addy Pross


In this book Addy Pross presents a theory on the origin of life.  He describes some recent research into the systems chemistry of self-replicating chemicals.  Using this he shows how this chemistry matches the behavior of simple living creatures.

Research into chemical systems indicates that these systems display properties that individual chemicals do not.  The one that matters for Pross’s argument is Dynamic Kinetic Stability (DKS).  DKS is similar to entropic stability of chemicals in that it is the tendency of a system to remain the same.  It differs in that the molecules in the system can all be constantly changing while the overall system maintains the same concentrations of those molecules.  The research demonstrates that some self-replicating RNA does tend to persist in this way.  It also shows that these RNA molecules exhibit other properties normally associated with biology.  Where there are several types the one that replicates better dominates and replaces the worse replicators.  When more than one competes for a single resource eventually one of them will replace its competitors.  Where there are several possible resources different types can dominate.

This is an interesting book.  The question is the origin of life and the evidence provided supports the argument Pross makes.  It is also a short book at just 200 pages.  It probably should have been shorter.  Pross has a tendency to layout familiar points in excruciating detail with multiple illustrations before getting to his point.

It can be bought on Amazon.

No comments:

Post a Comment