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This fully updated and expanded edition addresses the origins of biological and synthetic life from a systems biology perspective.
List 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.
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).
Summary
Addressing the origins of biological and synthetic life from a systems biology perspective, this new edition has undergone an extensive revision and includes greater coverage of synthetic biology. Unique to this edition are discussions with contemporaries in the field, demonstrating an evolution of thought on the question 'what is life?'.
