【アメリカ語勉強日記　12/24】

Since I have read "Tyranny of merits", I started a new book, "The vital question". It is on evolutionary biology.

I finished preface of the book. It briefly introduces three evolutionary discoveries in biology history and showed what the book is going to answer.

The author thinks if we can't understand evolution history of livings, we can't understand the mystery of living as if we can't understand society  without knowledge of history. And he enumerates three biologists who had profound impact on the area of the study.

First is Lynn Margulis, who introduced endosymbiosis to the biology. Endosymbiosis is a form of life, in which one microbe live in the host cell. In her era, the existence of  mitochondria and chloroplasts is known and looks like bacteria but no one thought it is really bacteria. Her revolutionary discover is now widely accepted but in later of her life, she became a kind of mystic and started to think the entire complex cell is created from symbioses, known as "serial endosymbiosis theory". It has close relation to "Gaia" theory.

Second is Carl Woese. He proposed 'three domains' tree of life. Three domains are archaea, eukaryotes, and bacteria. He found archea is totally different from bacteria in terms of gene and rejected idea of prokaryote.

Third figure is Bill Martin, he proposed "complex life arose from a singular endosymbiosis between archaeon host cell and the bacteria that became mitochondria".

Then he rise two fundamental questions in biology: "why life evolved in the perplexing way it did, and why cells are powered in such a peculiar fashion". This book is going to answer these questions. The author says the key point is energy and he can explain common traits among eukaryotes like nucleus, sex finite lifespan can be explained from the point of view.

He says this book can be a successor of Origin of life of Charles Darwin. I am totally new to this area but excited to read the following chapter !