What Sustains Life? Consilient Mechanisms for Protein-Based Machines and Materials /

• Main Author: Urry, Dan W. (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Boston, MA : Birkhäuser Boston, 2006.
• Subjects: Life sciences.; Community ecology, Biotic.; Evolutionary biology.; Biophysics.; Biological physics.; Life Sciences.; Evolutionary Biology.; Biophysics and Biological Physics.; Community & Population Ecology.

What Sustains Life? How can something so seemingly improbable and fragile as life exist in such hardy and resilient forms? The question has inspired intrigue among curious humans, from physicists to theologians, for centuries. Fascinated by this question, Dr Dan W. Urry, Professor of Chemical Engine...

Table of Contents:

• What Sustains Life? An Overview
• The Pilgrimage: Highlights in Our Understanding of the Products and Components of Living Organisms
• Likelihood of Life’s Protein Machines: Extravagant in Construction Yet Efficient in Function
• Consilient Mechanisms for Diverse Protein-based Machines: The Efficient Comprehensive Hydrophobic Effect
• On the Evolution of Protein-based Machines (Toward Complexity of Structure and Diversity of Function)
• Biology Thrives Near a Movable Cusp of Insolubility
• Consilient Mechanisms for Protein-based machines of Biology
• Advanced Materials for the Future: Protein-based Materials with Potential to Sustain Individual Health and Societal Development
• Epilogue.