Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable (Science Essentials, 24)

Falkowski and I both had an aquarium and radio kits as youthful hobbies. I didn’t see any connection at all between the two. I guess that’s why I’m reading his book and he’s not reading mine.There was a positive review in the NYRB, but with a warning that this was for the scientifically informed. I’m an interested layman and didn’t find it difficult. It’s only 180 pages long, well spaced. The first 50 pages are a breeze, and though a good background, could have easily been condensed. They relate the history of the microscope and how our knowledge has depended upon our ability to visualize microbes. Then we get into the chapter on nanomachines. This is where the speed bumps appear. At this point I had to Google some basic concepts, you know, nucleic acid, sulfide/sulphate, and the like; but only a dozen times. And frankly Falkowski does such a good job laying out the story, it’s really a matter of how deep the reader wants to go. Perhaps a glossary would have been helpful. The graphs and diagrams are also extremely well presented and helpful.If I had to pick one main topic it’s the evolution of the nanomachines as the energy producing artifacts in all life on earth. And our old friend ATP plays a large part as well. This is a great overview of the discoveries of the last decades of the tine mechanics of life. Additionally, the subtext is the recognition - angelfish and whisker radios - that the system as a whole is like, no, IS, an incredibly large, complex, interconnected chemo-electrical system.The gene transfers between “species” of microbes are explained and, very interesting to me, as I had not heard of it before, the notion of a concordium consisting of many microbial species. The subject ot gut microbes, which we’re hearing a lot about lately, figures in.From here each chapter makes giant leaps, the incorporation of microbes to create eukaryotic cells, the consortia of eucaryia to make plants and animals, snowball earth, the great oxygen event, and life elsewhere in our solar system. I consider my self an informed layman, but I learned something new every couple of pages.This is truly an overview of the development of life on Earth. We are constantly reminded of the feedback loops and how we can consider the whole as an immense electro-chemical system. It is a wonderful achievement and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is comfortable with Scientific American. It changed my naive view of life as a series of bags of chemicals gradually being refined by the environment, that’s for sure.I was reminded over and over again of the Gaia Hypothesis. Falkowski doesn’t mention it, probably because it has an unscientific ring. I never thought of it myself as a giant individual with a soul but more as an organizing construct, And I wasn’t sure how organized the whole was, anyway. But believe me, after reading this wonderful book, I’m a lot more sympathetic.

Professor Falkowski, has followed science & history to explain the reality of microbes present on our planet. It is an exceptional read by a very qualified scientist. To understand his full message, read this book cover to cover without passing any chapters. The author has revealed evidence that my be difficult to accept, but is backed up by the most accurate data currently available. I especially liked his personal story from a young boy learning about science through the lens of a microscope observing the unseen lives that grew, reproduced and died scooped from his simple fish tank. Gaining more and more need to understand all the hidden possibilities, he researched as many books about his microscopic subjects to eventually his professorship. It all started by a chance meeting. Read this book if you enjoy adventure, intrigue & a journey into the improbable.

Paul Falkowski is an eminent scientist who studies the impact of aquatic photosynthetic microbes on Earth's geochemical cycles and climate. This book is intended for the general reader. Without using technical jargon, he explains how microbes shaped the early planet, from the "oxygen revolution" as cyanobacteria supplied the first oxygen to the atmosphere and powered the first eukaryotes and multicellular life, to the role of microbes in interlocking and stabilizing the nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, hydrogen, and carbon cycles. The perspective is fresh, even for a scientifically aware reader, from the depiction of life as a "marketplace of electrons" changing hands to the "core nanomachines" of life (evolutionarily conserved macromolecular assemblies) which are continually repurposed. His writing style is engaging and the black-and-white illustrations nice. My favorite might be his description of the photoacoustic effect as tiny molecular claps. I have a few reservations about the book. In an attempt to keep the book accessible, he avoids any discussion of quantum energy levels or thermodynamics. It's hard to explain photosynthesis without those concepts. He doesn't explain catalysis and refers consistently to "nanomachines" except where he slips and calls them enzymes, without explanation. Sometimes it's better to give a full explanation which the reader might not entirely grasp than to quit early and be sure to mystify. For instance, there is a detailed diagram of reaction centers in photosynthesis, with photosystem I and II and photophosphorylation depicted; if you're going to go that far you might as well explain why there are two photosystems and how they work together. In tiptoeing around jargon he complicates things; the building blocks of RNA and DNA are referred to as "the nucleic acids," a term usually reserved for the polymers, until he slips and refers to them as nucleotides, without defining the term. The brief history of molecular biology is eclectic in the extreme, weighted toward scientists he knew personally, and sometimes wrong: Brenner and Crick are wrongly credited with deciphering the genetic code (their elegant experiments demonstrated the nature of the genetic code but didn't provide the Rosetta stone- that was Nirenberg, Leder, Khorana et al). There are curious omissions in present-day research- nothing about next generation sequencing or the wonders it has revealed in microbial diversity, although those are directly relevant to his story. Lots of typos: Noble for Nobel, Samaria for Sumeria (even in the index). He ends on a gentle cautionary note about how delicately balanced the biogeochemical cycles are and thus how catastrophic human-made climate change will be.

In this surprisingly short piece, the author manages to convince us that "microbes" are the stewards of Earth! Life on earth would depend on a global electronic circuit established, powered, and maintained by a handful microbial nanomachines that evolved billions of years ago. The wires of this planetary electronic circuit are the oceans and the atmosphere. The good functioning of this circuit would depend on only about 1500 core genes that are passed horizontally between microbes in a kind of global genetic market mall. If one core gene was lost from earth, the circuit would collapse, with catastrophic effects on life on earth. Comparatively, the loss of all animal or plant genes would have negligeable global effects. If life exists elsewhere in the universe, it will surely also depend on a similar mircobe-operating electronic circuit. We, humans, are perhaps alone in the universe but not the microbes!

Having read Nick Lane's "The Vital Question" and enjoyed it very much, I found Falkowski's "Life's Engines" a perfect adjunct. Although I'm an engineer without formal biology training, I found this book informative, easy to understand, and a pleasure to read. Lives up to it's back cover hype.

Libro molto carino ed interessante, q

A very worthwhile book. For the layman it is a valuable introduction to the molecular level actions that sustain life.

It's hard to find the necessary superlatives for this book, it is so solidly packed with the information necessary to begin to put substance on the little one seems to learn from the odd headline, or the occasional paragraph in the news. And there was so much more which I had missed entirely: intercellular ion transfer to produce energy, the different chemical reactions involved in photosynthesis, even the Great Oxidation Event, or how the individual bases, or nucleotides, in DNA encode for the different amino acids in proteins. It is brilliant and fascinating, but perhaps it should come with a warning: the book is divided into university-lecture-sized sections, and they do need concentration and absorption. Having started reading the book in my usual fifteen-minutes-with-a-cup-of-coffee breaks, I found I had to go back over some chapters as complete units, after I realised how much I had not absorbed properly.

perfect scope, perfect depth