Life on the Edge

Resumen del libro

Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how does it work? Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which provided a new perspective on evolution, Life on the Edge alters our understanding of life's dynamics as Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe Macfadden reveal the hitherto missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics.

Drawing on recent ground-breaking experiments around the world, they show how photosynthesis relies on subatomic particles existing in many places at once, while inside enzymes, those workhorses of life that make every molecule within our cells, particles vanish from one point in space and instantly materialize in another. Each chapter in Life on the Edge opens with an engaging example that illustrates one of life's puzzles - How do migrating birds know where to go? How do we really smell the scent of a rose? How do our genes manage to copy themselves with such precision?- and then reveals how quantum mechanics delivers its answer. Guiding the reader through the maze of rapidly unfolding discovery, Al-Khalili and McFadden communicate vividly the excitement of this explosive new field of quantum biology, with its potentially revolutionary applications, and also offer insights into the biggest puzzle of all: what is life?

Biografía del autor

Johnjoe McFadden es profesor de Genética Molecular en la Universidad de Surrey, donde estudia la genética de los microbios que causan enfermedades infecciosas, como la tuberculosis y la meningitis. Ha publicado más de 100 artículos en revistas académicas y ha escrito extensamente para el público general en The Guardian, Washington Post y Frankfurter Allgemeine y es autor de Quantum Evolution y coautor de varios libros, entre los cuales se encuentra Life on the Edge, que fue preseleccionado para el Royal Society Book Prize.