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Genetic Takeover is about the origin of life on the Earth.
It is a scientific detective story -- with clues, deductions and a surprise outcome.
Its clues are in the nature of living things; in the chemistry of crystals and
molecules; in geochemical and biochemical processes that can be seen now in operation.
One of the preliminary deductions is that those very first organisms
on Earth, simple enough to have arisen spontaneously, must have had an altogether
different design from any organisms now. There follows the idea that the component
parts of these starter organisms were minute mineral crystals rather than the
large organic molecules that are at the base of life now. The startling conclusion
is that our first ancestors were literally made of clay. How
to evolve from clay to DNA? Cairns-Smith turns a paradox into common sense. He
presents a simple mechanism for such a change, based on later evolutionary processes.
There was no gradual transformation of clay into DNA: there was a gradual replacement
of an old technology by a new. This was the genetic takeover. This
book is well illustrated with diagrams and electron microscope photographs. It
has a lively style and a clear line that any reader with a general interest in
science will follow readily. Dr. Cairns-Smith is Senior
Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry, Glasgow University. |
