Nick Lane, “A Matter of Energy: Biology From First Principles” (Open Agenda, 2021)
New Books in Science
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Prebiotic Chemistry Isn't a Cell as We Know It
Chemists have been guilty of ignoring biology, he says. The reason i became very interested in it isis because of these alkaline hydrothermal vents,. where you have natural proton gradients across inorganic barriers. And so it throws up this possibility that, well, cells have a structure. But they haven't really closed the distance between pre biotic chemistry and a cell as we know a cell. He asks whether hydrogen can convert too into organic molecules if driven by a proton gradient over an inorganic barrier.
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