Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Fascinating book. The author really knows his stuff and puts together a very persuasive story of how evolution was affected by Oxygen. Although some technical info through me at times, practically every page had some interesting tidbit. I found it hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: The "O" in Oxygen
Review: In Nick Lane's novel Oxygen, he talks about how important oxygen is, when it was discovered, how it can be hazardous, and how it can cure diseases, such as pneumonia. The element oxygen was discovered in the 1770's. Oxygen is an important element of life, because is we stopped breathing; we would be dead in minutes. Suffocation and drowning is the most human feared way to die. John Scott Haldane used oxygen to cure injuries in World War I. Nick Lane is brilliant when it comes to oxygen. It seems like he can answer almost every question one might have about the interesting subject. He informs the reader about how 4 billion years ago, there was no oxygen on Earth and how it makes up about 21% of the atmosphere. This brilliant novel author explains how oxygen first evolved, how many tiny organisms die when exposed to 0.1% of oxygen because it has no antioxidants and how the first cells evolved in an oxygen-free environment. Many theories and explanation about oxygen are detailed explains how oxygen comes from photosynthesis. I learned so much new and exciting information by reading this tremendous novel. Without the dramatic changes of oxygen, there would be no evolutionary steps. O2 can be extremely hazardous (hydrogen peroxide is hazardous if dissolved iron is present). AN APPLE A DAY COULD KEEP THE DOCTOR AWAY... which is a correct statement. It reduces the risk of heart attacks, strokes and some cancers because all kinds of antioxidants are found in fruits. Our whole body is an antioxidant machine, from the physical structure of individual cells to the physique of a human being. Mitochondria is for producing energy, hemoglobin is for delivering oxygen and vitamin C is for protecting against free radicals (which are at the roots of ageing and disease).
I enjoyed reading this novel because it was extremely informative and I enjoy reading about how oxygen is has been necessary for 4 billion years. I believe Nick Lane is a brilliant author and is extremely informative. I have learned so much about oxygen and how it's necessary in our day-to-day lives. I recommend this novel to everyone, even if one is just looking for a book to read for fun. Lane makes this novel anything but a quick read, however it's very incredibly worth it because it's so informative on an everyday necessity.

Rating:
Summary: Life's dangerous midwife
Review: In school, we learned of the ubiquity of hydrogen in the universe. It made up the stars, drifted between the galaxies, and, combined with nitrogen, composed the atmosphere of our solar system's giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn. We learned, too, how it combined with oxygen to make our planet's blessing - water. Oxygen was deemed the life-giver, earning our respect even when we burned things with it in the lab. That "burning" is a key element in Lane's treatise. We're all aware that without oxygen, we cannot live. On the other hand, too much of this vital element attacks our cells and contributes to the ageing process. Consequently, we've turned to "anti-oxidants" in hope of diminishing the negative aspects. Lane issues a strong cautionary note about this practice, using a strong evolutionary base to build his case.

Science has long known that the early Earth had little free oxygen in the atmosphere. The famous Urey-Miller experiments used a "reducing" atmospheric environment to build their compounds. Traditional biology argues that oxygen was emitted by photosynthetic bacteria as a waste product. Existing life thus had to adapt to this poisonous atmosphere. Lane challenges this view, describing mechanisms that made early organisms already oxygen tolerant. He contends that the Last Universal Common Ancestor, a minute organism residing in shallow seas, learned to break water into its component gases, using freed energy. In striking a balance between using oxygen as an energy source and preventing that energy from consuming the cell, life developed finely honed processes. Oxygen is more than just used by life, it is constrained and controlled carefully in organic mechanisms. As life gained in complexity it used oxygen to improve those control processes. We tamper with them at our peril.

The key is in how life deals with "free radicals". These compounds steal electrons, which are the basis for life's functioning. Free radicals have had some bad press in recent years, as Lane reminds us. There is much available advice about dealing with them and a pharmacoepia of "medicines" to be had that claim to reduce them or their impact. Lane argues that the complexity of processes and varying conditions within the body make any claims to deal with them highly suspect. The bottom line is that we don't have nearly enough knowledge about how the body copes with free radicals to have confidence in any of the suggested therapies.

Nearly a quarter of this book focusses on a question confronting us all - ageing. There have been countless attempts to understand the ageing process, most with the ambition to thwart or delay it. Their success rate has been notably abysmal, notes Lane. Approaches range from "oxygen pubs" to heavy doses of vitamin C. The author points out that not only is the concentration of oxygen used by each cell miniscule compared to what's available in the atmosphere, the processing system is many levels removed from the source. The body will use what's needed and scorn the rest. Flooding the body with oxygen or vitamins is more likely to impose "oxygen stress" than deliver any real benefit.

Lane's thorough analysis makes this book anything but a quick read. He follows evolutionary paths, historical accounts of research in all aspects of life, and explains organic processes in minute detail. He presents a complicated and long-term story, but his explanations are rendered with clarity and precision. It is simple to condemn this book for its wealth of information. That's the reaction of one seeking simple answers. It's easier to praise this book for its sweep of both history, precise evolutionary biology and breadth of information on a topic critical to our existence. With an extensive glossary and strong list of reference material, it's a boon to those wishing to understand our world and life's foundations.
[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Nick Lane's book, Oxygen The Molecule that made the World, is a surprising volume. It mixes organic and inorganic chemistry with evolutionary studies, paleontology, research medicine, and even a little engineering to explain how the world got to be as it is. The first half of the book is dedicated to what our early atmosphere was like and how it changed as a result of biological activity. It also discusses how the evolving atmosphere, particularly the presence of oxygen, affected the complexity of early life and the sudden flourish of biological diversity after the Precambrian. The last half of the volume deals with the recent research on free radicals and their effect on health and on the phenomena of aging and of immortality.
Doctor Lane's own background is in biochemistry, and his research focus has been on oxygen free radicals and metabolic function in organ transplants. Not surprisingly he went into some detail about the free radical cascade that affects cellular metabolism and DNA integrity. I found this somewhat difficult to understand as I have only a very rudimentary grounding in organic chemistry. Still I have to admit that I know somewhat more about the process than I did before reading this book.
Probably because I know significantly more about geology and paleontology, I enjoyed more fully the author's synthesis and analysis of what we know of the geological and biological development of our atmosphere and our planet. Some of this material was familiar to me from other sources: Certainly that O2 can actually be a "poison" I know from managing patients with ARDS (adult respiratory distress syndrome) on mechanical ventilators with 100% O2; that the earth went through a series of green house earth/snowball earth phases early in its history I had learned from Ward and Brownlee's book Rare Earth; that life had begun almost as early as it was able and much earlier than had been previously believed, I was aware of from works by Gould, Schopf, and others; and that the mitochondria may once have been free-living, aerobic organisms that formed a symbiotic relationship with anaerobic organisms was known to me from my past exposure to microbiology in a nursing class.
New to me however, was the concept that gigantism may have been a means of limiting the negative effects of a periodic increase in oxygen in the environment, as Dr. Lane suggests in his chapter on The Bolsover Dragonfly. Although I had read an article that suggested that the immense sizes achieved by some of the dinosaur species might have been due to a higher percent of O2 at the time, I had also understood that it was because oxygen was a "good" thing, an opportunity of sorts. Lane points out that the negative effects of oxygen on tissues and DNA through the free radical cascade might have been ameliorated by an increased size. An animal--or one presumes also a plant--that increased its size might have been able to distribute negative effects over a greater body mass. One wonders if the rise of the mammalian mega fauna of the ice ages and their sudden almost catastrophic disappearance might not also have been due to some temporary fluxuation in the oxygen level of their atmosphere. (In which case the early Native Americans could be once and for all exonerated of having liquidated them, since their demise would have been dictated by a return to a baseline oxygen level!) If this were the case, one might also question what type of changes might be expected among our own kind as a result of such an increase and decrease of atmospheric oxygen.
I found the doctor's ideas on the trade off between sexual reproduction and immortality a unique approach to the topic of aging. Some of this information--the studies of animal reproduction rates, predation, and age at death, for instance--was known to me. Dr. Lane's discussion brought it together in a much more complete way.
Certainly the concept of sexual reproduction being one of life's mechanisms of perpetuating the fragile, complex organic molecules (DNA) in an oxidative environment was interesting. I had read Ridley's proposal that sexual reproduction evolved as a means of resisting bacterial infection, but Lane's suggests why it began as early as the DNA swapping behavior among early single eukaryotic cells. That the massive increase in biological diversity was an indirect product of the release of oxygen into the atmosphere, is truly an amazing thought. In the event as Lane makes claim in his subtitle, oxygen was truly "The Molecule that made the World."

Rating:
Summary: A lot of information about a lot of different topics!
Review: Nick Lane's book, Oxygen The Molecule that made the World, is a surprising volume. It mixes organic and inorganic chemistry with evolutionary studies, paleontology, research medicine, and even a little engineering to explain how the world got to be as it is. The first half of the book is dedicated to what our early atmosphere was like and how it changed as a result of biological activity. It also discusses how the evolving atmosphere, particularly the presence of oxygen, affected the complexity of early life and the sudden flourish of biological diversity after the Precambrian. The last half of the volume deals with the recent research on free radicals and their effect on health and on the phenomena of aging and of immortality.
Doctor Lane's own background is in biochemistry, and his research focus has been on oxygen free radicals and metabolic function in organ transplants. Not surprisingly he went into some detail about the free radical cascade that affects cellular metabolism and DNA integrity. I found this somewhat difficult to understand as I have only a very rudimentary grounding in organic chemistry. Still I have to admit that I know somewhat more about the process than I did before reading this book.
Probably because I know significantly more about geology and paleontology, I enjoyed more fully the author's synthesis and analysis of what we know of the geological and biological development of our atmosphere and our planet. Some of this material was familiar to me from other sources: Certainly that O2 can actually be a "poison" I know from managing patients with ARDS (adult respiratory distress syndrome) on mechanical ventilators with 100% O2; that the earth went through a series of green house earth/snowball earth phases early in its history I had learned from Ward and Brownlee's book Rare Earth; that life had begun almost as early as it was able and much earlier than had been previously believed, I was aware of from works by Gould, Schopf, and others; and that the mitochondria may once have been free-living, aerobic organisms that formed a symbiotic relationship with anaerobic organisms was known to me from my past exposure to microbiology in a nursing class.
New to me however, was the concept that gigantism may have been a means of limiting the negative effects of a periodic increase in oxygen in the environment, as Dr. Lane suggests in his chapter on The Bolsover Dragonfly. Although I had read an article that suggested that the immense sizes achieved by some of the dinosaur species might have been due to a higher percent of O2 at the time, I had also understood that it was because oxygen was a "good" thing, an opportunity of sorts. Lane points out that the negative effects of oxygen on tissues and DNA through the free radical cascade might have been ameliorated by an increased size. An animal--or one presumes also a plant--that increased its size might have been able to distribute negative effects over a greater body mass. One wonders if the rise of the mammalian mega fauna of the ice ages and their sudden almost catastrophic disappearance might not also have been due to some temporary fluxuation in the oxygen level of their atmosphere. (In which case the early Native Americans could be once and for all exonerated of having liquidated them, since their demise would have been dictated by a return to a baseline oxygen level!) If this were the case, one might also question what type of changes might be expected among our own kind as a result of such an increase and decrease of atmospheric oxygen.
I found the doctor's ideas on the trade off between sexual reproduction and immortality a unique approach to the topic of aging. Some of this information--the studies of animal reproduction rates, predation, and age at death, for instance--was known to me. Dr. Lane's discussion brought it together in a much more complete way.
Certainly the concept of sexual reproduction being one of life's mechanisms of perpetuating the fragile, complex organic molecules (DNA) in an oxidative environment was interesting. I had read Ridley's proposal that sexual reproduction evolved as a means of resisting bacterial infection, but Lane's suggests why it began as early as the DNA swapping behavior among early single eukaryotic cells. That the massive increase in biological diversity was an indirect product of the release of oxygen into the atmosphere, is truly an amazing thought. In the event as Lane makes claim in his subtitle, oxygen was truly "The Molecule that made the World."

Rating:
Summary: More than you can ask for in a book.
Review: The story of Oxygen in the earth environment is detailed, but
goes further in its side explanations of the many various subjects
related to this story. The mystery of photosenthesis was clearly
explained at the molecular lever in such detail as were the other
submentioned processes of this book. I found this man to be a
genius of knowledge, seeming to know something about everything.
I do not know how to write books, but If I did, it would be this way. You will never go wrong remembering the author and buying
what he writes. A 10+ in my experience.

Rating:
Summary: More than you can ask for in a book.
Review: The story of Oxygen in the earth environment is detailed, but
goes further in its side explanations of the many various subjects
related to this story. The mystery of photosenthesis was clearly
explained at the molecular lever in such detail as were the other
submentioned processes of this book. I found this man to be a
genius of knowledge, seeming to know something about everything.
I do not know how to write books, but If I did, it would be this way. You will never go wrong remembering the author and buying
what he writes. A 10+ in my experience.