What Sustains Life?

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Introduction

   Pages 1-27

3. What Sustains Life? An Overview

   Pages 28-69

4. The Pilgrimage: Highlights in Our Understanding of the Products and Components of Living Organisms

   Pages 70-93

5. Likelihood of Life’s Protein Machines: Extravagant in Construction Yet Efficient in Function

   Pages 94-101

6. Consilient Mechanisms for Diverse Protein-based Machines: The Efficient Comprehensive Hydrophobic Effect

   Pages 102-217

7. On the Evolution of Protein-based Machines (Toward Complexity of Structure and Diversity of Function)

   Pages 218-238

8. Biology Thrives Near a Movable Cusp of Insolubility

   Pages 239-328

9. Consilient Mechanisms for Protein-based machines of Biology

   Pages 329-454

10. Advanced Materials for the Future: Protein-based Materials with Potential to Sustain Individual Health and Societal Development

    Pages 455-540

11. Epilogue

    Pages 541-639

12. Back Matter

    Pages 611-632

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In the sixth century BC, Thales of Miletus, father of the Ionian Enhghtenment, setting aside the mythic views of Homer and Hesiod asked, "What is the world made of?" and thereby became the first physicist.^ He answered that water is the basis of all matter and thereupon became an often cited example of early Greek reasoning gone astray. However, not only did Thales initi­ ate scientific inquiry, but also, with reference to living things, he was substantially correct. Living organisms are composed mostly of water, but the unique role of water in living organisms has been wanting for adequate description. From the perspective of D.H. Lawrence, "Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one part, but there is a third thing that makes it water and nobody knows what that is." From our perspective and as advanced in this volume, the interaction of water with dissimilar groups compris­ ing each protein molecule, the competition for water between these disparate substituents along chain molecules of living organisms, and the freedom of motion that water gives protein chains combine to provide the physical basis of Life.

• biology
• complexity
• development
• evolution
• protein

• BioTechnology Institute, University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus, St. Paul, USA

  Dan W. Urry

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