Reddit reviews Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life
We found 11 Reddit comments about Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Oxford University Press USA
Time-to-division isn't really the driver of genetic change in bacteria really. In bacteria it's more the case that individual bacteria are able to actively share DNA plasmid with one another which allows gene transfer and propagation to occurr at a phenomenally higher rate than in eukaryotes (it's also, funnily enough, a major reason why it's impossible for bacteria to evolve into multi-cellular organisms). Rapid adaptation in bacteria is mostly due to this gene transfer capability, and not due to somatic mutations (the primary driver of genetic drift in eukaryotes). See Part 3 of Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nich Lane for a more in depth explanation.
Virus do not share DNA or RNA like bacteria, and arguably not living organisms as they are not capable of reproducing their own genetic material (viruses infect host cells and manipulate the cellular machinery of their target to replicate their genetic material).
Power Sex Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life by Nick Lane is a good pick. It isn't entirely biochemistry, but does delve into the electron transport chain and metabolism. It is also packed with interesting stuff.
mitochondria come close - maybe Lucas had just read something about them when he invented that name? The importance of mitochondria cannot be overstated, just saying they are the cell's "powerplant" is a huge understatement. They have their own DNA. Part of it, another part migrated to the cell nucleus, but in order to regulate their function quickly and independent from other mitochondria - a cell's nucleus could only regulate them from "remote" and all of them at once they kept their own.
Also: Mitochondrial DNA only passes down the maternal line! So men contribute less than have the genes. Read this book and your life will never be the same, unless you studied biology or something in which case I don't know why you read my comment all the way to the end...
If you're interested in mitochondria, maybe you would like this book. I found it a bit hard to read, but I also don't have any background in biology.
There is a great book titled "Power Sex and Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" by Nick Lane. it opens with a history of the discovery of the mitochondria, and the steps taken to understand what it does and how.
In general, for most things we discovered about biology before the advent of modern genetics or even an understanding of what a gene was there were a few common attributes that made something microscopic easier to study.
First, is there a lot of it in a tissue? We have really good purification techniques now, not to mention the ability to take pretty much any genetically encoded protein and convert a yeast or bacteria cell into a little factory to make grams of our protein, but in the early days of discovery, you needed a natural source with lots of your protein of interest (like hemoglobin in blood).
Second does your protein/molecule/organelle have a color? when you get right down to the cellular level, so much of what there is to study is transparent. Even chemical purification techniques that were available typically resulted in a white or yellowish powder. But for some things, and this is especially true for mitochondria and chloroplasts, there is a very distinct color. Mitochondria are packed with molecules called cytochromes which give them a very distinctive orange/red/brown color.
For most scientist all it takes is an observation of something interesting, a tiny thread that they can start tugging on. After that its incremental test after incremental test, gathering information one step at a time until the puzzle is solved...or as solved as possible
I hadn't seen this answer yet, so I will throw it out there. Like most of the other ideas here this is a hypothesis. Life has made various evolutionary innovations over history and one idea is that woody bark/stems were first evolved sometime immediately proceeding the carboniferous. Woody stems are stronger and more resilient because there are protein cross links between cellulose strands. Cellulose being a long strand of linked sugars. Woody stems are very difficult to digest, which is why pretty much nothing eats it. When it first evolved, literally nothing ate it because it was so new and no organism had the tools to break it down. So, during the carboniferous trees and plants with woody stems proliferated because they had few or no natural predators, and probably also because they could grow taller than their competitors thanks to the strong stems and thus had better access to sunlight. They did still die of old age however, and that woody material would just sit there without decaying. Eventually it would be buried and millions of years later we would dig it out of the ground as coal or oil.
Well, the process plants use to grow is they take CO2 out of the atmosphere to build cellulose and other structural molecules and release oxygen. So what was happening in the carboniferous was that this was a very one way process. The carbon was being fixated and nothing was breaking it down to re-release it.
That all changed when fungi, think mushrooms and molds, eventually evolved the enzymatic equipment to break down woody stems. Sometime at the end of the carboniferous presumably. With this second innovation, the woody part of plants didn't just sit around waiting to be buried, it was broken down the fixated CO2 was released back into the atmosphere. Obviously this added a new variable to the equation and the oxygen level in the atmosphere struck a new and lower balance.
I suggest "Oxygen" and "power, sex, suicide" by nick lane if you are really interested in this subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning/dp/0199205647
https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Molecule-World-Popular-Science/dp/0198607830
'power sex and suicide' by Nick Lane. Great book on the importance of mitochondria.
Almost all sexually reproducing organisms have two sexes and a rigorous method for maintaining them. There are some interesting hypotheses that this has something to do with the inheritance of organelles. I read about it in Nick Lane's book.
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning/dp/0199205647
There are a lot of mechanisms for making (and keeping) the two sexes different. I find it really interesting that there's so much variation here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
Hey H0RSED1K it's good to hear that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I just want to graduate as soon as possible - I'd rather spend 40 hours a week working and getting paid, then 80 hours a week studying and paying for it.
One text we used in one of my classes was great, it is Molecular Biology of the Cell
I would love to read this entire text over an 8 month period or so, and complete the problems book
I feel that this would solidify my basic knowledge in biology.
Following this I would be able to target specific areas of interest.
I'm having errors accessing my Amazon wish list, but some of the books I can remember are as follows:
Also, you can consult some of the free courses online (MIT's OCW, Coursera.org, iTunes U, Open.edu) and once you obtain the syllabus you can review the material at your leisure. There are also sites like BenchFly.com, Jove.com that have videos of lab techniques and experiments. I presently don't have the time to review these in detail, so they are on my post-graduation queue.
If you want to do this right, you'll probably have to hire a tutor to answer questions you might have.
I gave my wife Women without Superstition, Your Inner Fish, Agora, and Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life.
Ernst Mayer, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins have written some decent books broadly covering the evidence for evolution. Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters fits into that general category, and does a good job of outlining the evidence for evolution as well, in particular from a paleontological perspective.
Astrobiologist / Paleontologist Peter Ward has written a ton of fantastic books. I'd start with Rare Earth, which outlines the Rare Earth hypothesis, ie complex life is likely rare in the universe. If you read Rare Earth, you'll come away with a better understanding of the abiotic factors which influence the evolution of life on Earth. If you end up enjoying Rare Earth, I'd highly recommend Ward's other books.
Terra, by paleontologist Michael Novacek describes the evolution of the modern biosphere, in particular from the Cretaceous onwards, and then discusses environmental change on a geological scale to modern environmental challenges facing humanity. It's one of those books which will change the way you think about the modern biosphere, and the evolution in the context ecosystems, as opposed to individual species.
Another book by a paleontologist is When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, looking at the Permian mass extinction, which was the most catastrophic mass extinction of the Phanerozoic wiping out 95%+ of all species. More focused on the geology than the other books I mentioned, so if you're not into geology you probably wont enjoy it so much.
Biochemist Nick Lane has written some great books. Life ascending would be a good one to start off with. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life is really excellent as well.
The Origins of Life and the Universe is written by molecular biologist Paul Lurquin. It mostly focuses on the origin of life. It's pretty accessible for what it covers.
Another couple of books I would recommend to people looking for something more advanced are: Michael Lynch's Origins of Genome Architecture, which covers similar stuff to much of his research, although takes a much broader perspective. Genes in conflict is a pretty comprehensive treatment of selfish genetic elements. Fascinating read, although probably a bit heavy for most laypeople.