Table of Contents

Part I. Approaches to the Origin of Life: 1. Setting the stage; 2. The hardware; 3. Ascending the ramp of complexity; 4. Experimental approaches to the origins of life; 5. Origin of life from ground zero; Part II. What Is Life? The Bio-Logics of Cellular Life: 6. Autopoiesis - the invariant property; 7. Cognition; Part III. Order and Organization in Biological Systems: 8. Self-organization; 9. The notion of emergence; 10. Self-replication and self-reproduction; Part IV. The World of Vesicles: 11. The various types of surfactant aggregates; 12. Vesicle reactivity and transformations; 13. Biochemistry and molecular biology in vesicles; Part V. Towards the Synthetic Biology of Minimal Cells: 14. A panoramic view of synthetic biology; 15. The minimal cell.

Promotional Information

This fully updated and expanded edition addresses the origins of biological and synthetic life from a systems biology perspective.

About the Author

Pier Luigi Luisi is Professor Emeritus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETHZ) in Switzerland, where he developed his professional career, notably initiating Cortona Week in 1985. He has also held the position of Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Rome 3. He has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed papers as well as a number of books, including The Systems View of Life (with Fritjof Capra, Cambridge, 2014).

Reviews

'It is ten years since Professor Luisi's classic book The Emergence of Life appeared. It is highly welcome therefore that this second edition will explain many of the important advances that have occurred in the last decade. With his profound systems approach, Professor Luisi is better placed than anyone to do this. He also includes valuable interviews with other leading systems scientists. Highly recommended for those working in and interested in this growing field.' Denis Noble, University of Oxford

'In the theory of evolution, the spontaneous increase in complexity from inorganic matter to the emergence of life has been a mystery ever since Darwin first speculated about it. During recent decades, however, a new systemic approach to this puzzle emerged and led to a series of remarkable discoveries and experimental achievements. Pier Luigi Luisi has been at the very center of this exciting new field of research for over thirty years, and in this book he distills his experience into a coherent and fascinating narrative - essential reading for anyone interested in the science of the origin of life on Earth.' Fritjof Capra, Center for Ecoliteracy, Berkeley, California

'The Emergence of Life has the most thorough discussion we have ever read on this topic. The various avenues of research get full and deep, updated presentation, enhanced with pictures, graphs and tables. Author Pier Luigi Luisi often includes conversations with primary research specialists when their fields are under discussion.' Brig Klyce, Cosmic Ancestry