Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry
Life has existed on the Earth for approximately four billion years. The sheer depth of evolutionary time, and the diversity of extant species, makes it tempting to assume that all the key biochemical innovations underpinning life have already happened. But we are only a little over halfway through t...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
2016
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5014022/ |
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pubmed-50140222016-09-09 Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry Brewster, Jodi L. Finn, Thomas J. Ramirez, Miguel A. Patrick, Wayne M. Molecular Evolution Life has existed on the Earth for approximately four billion years. The sheer depth of evolutionary time, and the diversity of extant species, makes it tempting to assume that all the key biochemical innovations underpinning life have already happened. But we are only a little over halfway through the trajectory of life on our planet. In this Opinion piece, we argue: (i) that sufficient time remains for the evolution of new processes at the heart of metabolic biochemistry and (ii) that synthetic biology is providing predictive insights into the nature of these innovations. By way of example, we focus on engineered solutions to existing inefficiencies in energy generation, and on the complex, synthetic regulatory circuits that are currently being implemented. The Royal Society 2016-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5014022/ /pubmed/27555646 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0269 Text en © 2016 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Brewster, Jodi L. Finn, Thomas J. Ramirez, Miguel A. Patrick, Wayne M. |
| spellingShingle |
Brewster, Jodi L. Finn, Thomas J. Ramirez, Miguel A. Patrick, Wayne M. Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry |
| author_facet |
Brewster, Jodi L. Finn, Thomas J. Ramirez, Miguel A. Patrick, Wayne M. |
| author_sort |
Brewster, Jodi L. |
| title |
Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry |
| title_short |
Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry |
| title_full |
Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry |
| title_fullStr |
Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Whither life? Conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry |
| title_sort |
whither life? conjectures on the future evolution of biochemistry |
| description |
Life has existed on the Earth for approximately four billion years. The sheer depth of evolutionary time, and the diversity of extant species, makes it tempting to assume that all the key biochemical innovations underpinning life have already happened. But we are only a little over halfway through the trajectory of life on our planet. In this Opinion piece, we argue: (i) that sufficient time remains for the evolution of new processes at the heart of metabolic biochemistry and (ii) that synthetic biology is providing predictive insights into the nature of these innovations. By way of example, we focus on engineered solutions to existing inefficiencies in energy generation, and on the complex, synthetic regulatory circuits that are currently being implemented. |
| publisher |
The Royal Society |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5014022/ |
| _version_ |
1613645276263743488 |