The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup

The issue of life's origins has long been troubling to scientists and lay observers alike. When Charles Darwin wrote to Joseph Hooker that life likely formed in "some warm little pond" from elemental chemicals, he set in motion years of study by countless researchers. The question hinged on what was necessary to initiate "the spark of life". Wills and Bada recount much of the work done to explain that obscure beginning. For them, the pivotal event is the famous Miller-Urey experiment of the 1950s. First hailed as a, perhaps "the", major breakthrough, it was challenged and suffered from more updated information. The authors revive the original concept, enlarging it to restore its validity. The means they use to achieve this is two-pronged: an investigation of life from "the bottom up" matched by another from "the top down". Wills and Bada clearly wish to update the reading public in what has transpired in "origins of life" research since Stanley Miller zapped his own "little pond" in a sealed flask. They acknowledge the objections later researchers posed about Earth's early environment. They also confront the scenarios offered by Graham Cairns Smith and Gunter Wachtershauser. The former suggested organic compounds might "learn" replication from clay crystals, while the latter suggested the energy transfer methods associated with iron pyrites would support metabolic paths prior to the formation of cells. Wachtershauser's mechanism, they admit, works admirably in the environment of sea-floor vents, which were almost certainly present on the early Earth. Yet, attractive as both suggestions are, the authors find updated versions of the original Miller-Urey more convincing. The issue is, of course, Darwin's evolution by natural selection. How early in life's beginnings could "selection" begin its winnowing process? Building up molecules that will ultimately establish life-sustaining forms is unsatisfactory. In order to function, selection must have replication and variation in place. The replication means sustained patterns of one form, while variation suggests many types of forms allowing selection to take place in a stable environment. That, insist the authors, means something like a gene must have been established reasonably early in life. Since a gene's task is the production of proteins which accelerate the process, there must have been a feedback loop system in action. For some, this structure suggests an early form of RNA, leading to what they call "the RNA world". The authors contend that RNA, even in simple form, is still too complex and fragile a molecule to have survived Earth's harsh conditions. Instead, they propose what they deem a "Peptide Nucleic Acid" or "PNA". Not suffering RNA's delicate nature, PNA in various forms could find havens in tidal pools, tenaciously bound to rocks and forming oily films as protection against desiccating sunlight. Thus Darwin's "warm little pond" finds vindication 150 years l

This is a good popular book on the current hypotheses of how the first complex molecules may have combined to form the fundamental structures of early replicating systems. After a good brief historical survey that shows some of the problems previous encountered, the authors examine a variety of possible scenarios as to how a "primordial" chemical soup could have given rise to more complex structures, metabolism, and genetic information containing molecules. The authors, both of whom are well known and respected known scientists have a writing style that is easy to read and the level of the material should be reasonably accessible to even high school level readers. A couple of minor errors that anyone could make on the first edition were corrected in the later editions.

I read a lot of material on the origin of life. Having run across Jeffery Bada's writings in some books, as well as on his web page, in the peer-reviewed journal `Science', and in popular science journals such as `The Sciences', I regarded Bada as an honest scientist: one who presents an even-handed accounting of material and evidence. I have always found his fairness and willingness to express his skepticism to be quite refreshing, especially since the topic of the origin of life can have major philosophical and religious ramifications (many scientists present only the positive evidences, hide the conflicting evidences, and do their utmost to shove their materialistic philosophy down the reader's throats). Bada holds firmly to a purely-natural origin of life, but he does not allow his worldview to bias his work - he is true to scientific evidences foremost. I expected the same from him when I heard of his book. When I read "The Spark of Life", I was not disappointed. Bada - and apparently the lead author, Christopher Wills, as well - present the reader with an honest coverage of the details, along the lines of, "According to this theory, ..., but keep in mind that....". As another reviewer noted, the authors present the reader with both sides of the argument and allow the reader to come to his or her own conclusion: the authors do not insist on telling you what you must think. For their maintenance of integrity in what can be a rather volatile subject, I commend the authors and "award" them 5 stars.But the praise does not end there. They provide an up-to-date, broad, introductory coverage of the OOL field. If you know nothing about it at all, you can sit down and read the book and understand almost every sentence, and when you have completed reading the book, you will be up to speed on almost all aspects. This is probably the best introductory book on the origin of life I have read to date. Again, worthy of 5 stars.However, note that the book is at the introductory level. It is written in everyday language and does not delve into the confusing and overwhelming complexities of organic chemistry or molecular cell biology. Those who have already read "The Molecular Origins of Life: Assembling Pieces of the Puzzle" will not find anywhere near the level of detail in "The Spark of Life" as they did in "The Molecular Origins of Life": I would recommend this book to those readers only if they found the other book "over their heads", or too-narrowly focussed. But this does not detract from "The Spark of Life" at all. It was not aimed at the research scientist as the other book was.Finally, I would like to briefly address an error the authors make. On page 109, they mistakenly mention cytosine instead of thymine. This would be a major blunder under normal circumstances, but it is absolutely trivial in the book. Why? Because the mistake is isolated: it affects only two sentences out of the entire book - no other sentence anywhere in the

Religions have had the previous privilege of holding factual their own details of creation, but as humankind has witnessed throughout history, science has continually answered questions to nature's capricious riddles (lighting was always thought to be a sign from the gods until rationale and logic explained fundamental laws with no vengeful motives). Science has recently been given enough information to begin to treat the origins of life as what I ironically consider, the Holy Grail. As an avid reader of books concerning the origins of life, a common thread for most of them is a biased account of the scientist's or writer's ideas. Although this is an acceptable format, it is a somewhat ingenuous approach considering the depth to the question asked. In Wills and Bada's 'The Spark of Life,' the journey into this question is taken from a strict factual account. Analogous to a court case, the majority of the book deals with the facts at hand. This is very good to know to any reader who wants to make up their own mind. The book also does an extremely good job in discussing the pieces of the puzzle that are missing. No scientist is going to deny the fact that there is a lot more that is unknown than known, but that is what makes this nascent field so interesting. Wills and Bada present fascinating details of past and present ideas, the people involved and their scientific travels. Some ideas reconfirmed, some thrown out and others still awaiting future research. Some of the old ideas may sound ridiculous to today's reader such as martian canals, moon creatures, to name a few, but the book does a great job in trying to put the reader in the minds of a society where no remote satellites existed, few facts were at hand and imaginations ran wild. The book also spends a lot of time discussing the recent ideas and brings forth the problems and solutions they provide. As an aside, no "lunar bat-men" were ever found, but Wills and Bada ease your mind by relaying that a dedicated woman's group from Massachusetts were very eager to contact them so they could be converted to Christianity. The book also delves into how today's scientific group is tackling the origins question. Some are involved with working from the bottom-up digging up what is known about the construction of DNA, RNA, proteins, etc. and the other group trying to work from the top-down, dissecting the genetic code in trying to find fundamental roots to the genetic tree. The interesting details of what is being uncovered is discussed and the book does a good job in trying not to make it unaccessible to the non-chemist but also provides excellent resources to anyone with some education in the field. Anyone who is interested in this field should begin with this book as the majority of others branch off from it.As a side note, I was very fortunate to have schooled with Dr. Jeffrey Bada at the Scripp's Institution of Oceanography and had the opportunity to do summer research in his labor

Where are all the reviews? Come on, people! This is a great book! It is the best popular book I've ever read on the biology of the origin of life. It starts out with a historical survey of the efforts to deal with this problem. When I first picked up the book, I thought this section was only in there to pad out the page count. But I was dead wrong. Not only is the writing style lively and entertaining (without being too cute), but the authors show how an understanding of the historical development of the effort helps to understand where the science of this problem is today. You know how they stay that God is in the details? Well, it is actually in the nitty-gritty details in this section of the book that makes this historical introduction valuable. Anyone interested in the problem of the origin of life knows about Stanley Miller's experiments of sending electric sparks through a mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor and how they produced an incredibly complex mixture of organic compounds, including many of the amino acids of life. But never have I read such a detailed description of the experiments. I usually gloss over descriptions of Miller's experiments, mainly as it turns out because the descriptions are boring without knowledge of the details. But the authors of this book show how extremely interesting the details of these experiments actually were and why they were so important, even though it turned out that Miller's assumptions of the composition of the primitive atmosphere were wrong. This level of detail sets the tone for the entire book, which really delves into the details. Non-specialists are bound to come away with a deeper understanding of the problems involved in understanding the origin of life, even if they've read the popular books by Christian De Duve, Thomas Gold, and John Maynard Smith.After presenting the historical background, the authors first take a bottom up, then a top down approach to the problem. The bottom up approach examines various likely scenarios that have been developed of how a basic chemical soup could have given rise to metabolism and heredity. The top down approach looks at life as it is today and tries to work the problem backwards. This is an especially interesting section of the book and points out the importance of symbiosis and the probable rampant exchange of hereditary material in the very early history of life. The "tree" of life it turns out is not a well-organized tree at the bottom, but a complex network where diverse, unrelated organisms freely exchanged hereditary material. I found it very interesting that this notion was in this book already, since it was only a few months ago that an article on this theory appeared in Scientific American. This book is VERY up to date.Before reading this book, I was persuaded that Gold's theories of the origin of life were very likely true, that it really formed deep within the mantle. But after reading