What Sustains Life?

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 Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, St Paul, begins his investigation into the sustenance of life through an examination of the fundamental design of elastic-contractile model proteins. What does an understanding of these mechanisms lend to the comprehension of life itself? Encapsulating three decades of Dr. Urry's collaborative research and analysis, his initial investigation into the basis of life expands include an increasingly complex and diverse story that is part science, part personal memoir and wholly fascinating.

Zusammenfassung
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.

Inhalt
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.