British biochemist Nick Lane's latest book might be less enigmatically titled “Everything you've ever wanted to know about mitochondria but were afraid to ask.” “Vital” here has a double meaning: it is the question of the origin of vitality, of life, and it is also the most important question we can ask if we are to understand life as we know it. And so the vital question is this: Why did complex (eukaryotic) life arise but once in the four billion-plus years of the Earth's evolutionary time frame?
To answer that question means starting at the very beginning, with the chemical formation of the first cell, most likely in the gently warmed bioreactors of deep sea alkaline thermal vents. Out is the famous “primordial soup” of the Miller-Urey experiments. Discounted are the glamorous, hot, and belching “black smokers” that have gotten all the publicity as the home of ancient bacteria....
University of California Press