Dwarkesh Podcast Nick Lane – Life as we know it is chemically inevitable
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Oct 10, 2025 
In this conversation, Nick Lane, an evolutionary biochemist at University College London, dives into the origins of life and the role of eukaryotes. He suggests that early life may have emerged from hydrothermal vents, explaining why life relies on proton gradients and why complex cells evolved only once. Lane discusses how two sexes evolved for mitochondrial quality control and how early life’s chemistry implies its prevalence across the galaxy. He connects these theories to the large-scale patterns seen in eukaryotic evolution and challenges listeners to embrace scientific curiosity.
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Plausibility Requires Mechanism, Not Hand-Waving
- Lane challenges optimistic hand-waving that 'evolution will find another way' without concrete mechanisms.
- He argues probability, Earth examples, and constraints make the mitochondrial route the most plausible path to complexity.
Cassini Found Organics In Enceladus Plumes
- Cassini's flybys of Enceladus found water plumes with dissolved organics and hydrogen.
- That implies an under-ice ocean with hydrothermal chemistry similar to early-Earth vents.
Protocell Growth Enables Early Heredity
- Early protocells could reproduce compositionally: deterministic chemistry drives growth and fission, producing heredity at the cell level.
- Introducing replicating RNAs inside protocells supplies evolvability beyond environment-driven determinism.
