HOW LIFE WORKS

Generating a new language for the book of life.

Life is not all about tidy genetic blueprints; it is influenced by "messy and capricious" elements so many levels that genes are “just ingredients for creating a palette of...possibilities,” writes Ball, a former longtime editor at Nature and author of many books about science and nature. He first examines old biological tenets gone wrong, such as the notion that one gene is equal to one protein, or that correcting single gene mutations can “cure” most diseases. Language, writes the author, is the only “human technology” that bears any resemblance to the “mechanism of life...undoubtedly because it is a kind of ‘organic technology’ as much a part of our biological nature as is our flesh and blood, our minds, our cultures." Like life, when “you reduce it to its component parts, you lose its meaning.” Later, the author continues, “meaning carries a lot of baggage in biology, and you’ll rarely see it used in an academic text on the topic. But it’s a crucial concept, because it conveys a large part of what distinguishes life from other states of matter.” Many DNA sequences linked to complex traits and diseases are outside the “coding” genome,” and genes that generate fins can be “readily redirected to make an arm…Rapid phenotypic change is possible precisely because so little is demanded of the genes themselves.” In showing that complex life is more “emergent” than “programmed,” Ball takes on many conventional notions about biology. “We are at the beginning of a profound rethinking of how life works,” he writes. Evolution has consistently invented new ways of creating living beings, and it will continue to do so. “The challenge,” writes the author, “is to find a good way of talking about these vital stratagems,” and his latest book offers plenty of food for thought for scientists in disciplines from medicine to engineering.

A bold effort to create a new language that forces a “rethinking” of “thinking itself.”