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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Life sciences: general issues > Evolution
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Evolution's Destiny - Co-evolving Chemistry of the Environment and Life (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,444
Discovery Miles 24 440
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Evolution's Destiny - Co-evolving Chemistry of the Environment and Life (Hardcover)
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This book is written as an addition to Darwin's work and that of
molecular biologists on evolution so as to include views of it from
the point of view of chemistry rather than just from our knowledge
of the biology and genes of organisms. By concentrating on a wide
range of chemical elements, not just those in traditional organic
compounds, we show that there is a close relationship between the
geological or environmental chemical changes from the formation of
Earth and those of organisms from the time of their origin. These
are considerations which Darwin or other scientists could not have
explored until very recent times since sufficient analytical data
were not available. They lead us to suggest that there is a
combined geo- and bio-chemical evolution, that of an ecosystem,
which has had a systematic chemical development. In this
development the arrival of new very similar species is shown to be
by random Darwinian competitive selection processes such that a
huge variety of species coexist with only minor differences in
chemistry and advantages. This is in agreement with previous
studies. On the large scale of evolution of very different
organisms, and over greater timescales, by way of contrast, we
observe that groups of species have special, different, chemical
features and function. It is more difficult to understand how they
evolved and therefore we examine their chemical development in
detail. Overall there is a cooperative evolution of a chemical
system driven by capture of energy, mainly from the sun, and its
degradation in which the chemistry of both the environment and
organisms are facilitating intermediates. We shall suggest that the
overall drive of the whole joint system is to optimise the rate of
this energy degradation. Since the environmental changes are
inorganic and relatively fast they move inevitably to equilibrium.
The living part of the system, the organisms, under the influence
of this inevitable environmental change are forced to follow but as
they are increasingly energised and their reactions are slow, they
move further away from equilibrium. We are able to explore the ways
in which this chemical system evolved, recognising that as
complexity of the chemistry of organisms increased, they had to be
formed from more and more compartments and to become part of a
chemically cooperative overall activity. They could not remain as
isolated species. Only in the last chapter do we attempt to make a
connection between the changing chemistry of organisms with the
coded molecules of each cell which have to exist to explain
reproduction.
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