DNA dynamos

摘要

For all its triumphs, physics has yet to answer the most personal question about our Universe: what is it that makes us? Peter Hoffmanns Life's Ratchet surveys how the field is squaring up to this challenge.Everything is made of atoms. So why can I think, write, even develop new models of my own existence, while the chair I'm sitting on cannot? Somehow, in living things, matter makes molecular mechanisms with the ability to harvest the energy to organize, maintain and propagate themselves. That opens up a world of potent complexity that leads to cells, plants, animals and humans.