Life Ascending by Nick Lane – review

When I was at school in the early 1980s, my biology teacher recommended that anyone having doubts about the conventional scientific view of how life evolved on Earth should borrow his copy of Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes by Nicholas J Mitchell.

I took up his offer and read that the statistical probability of even the simplest protein or DNA molecule assembling by chance in the seething chaos of the primordial soup was almost zero. It was so improbable, in fact, that on average a single molecule of a simple, functional enzyme would form by chance only once in the lifetime of the universe. And life without enzymes or DNA was unthinkable.

Mitchell went on to raise the familiar objection to the evolution of highly complex structures such as the eye by chance mutations, concluding: "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact."

I sincerely hope that if I was at school today my biology teacher would have a copy of Nick Lane's new book on hand. In Life Ascending, Lane painstakingly brings his readers up to speed on the latest scientific insights into 10 great evolutionary "inventions", among them the origin of life itself, DNA, photosynthesis, complex cells and sight – all wildly implausible events, on the face of it, but not in the least surprising to a modern biologist.

The 30-odd years since Mitchell wrote his creationist text have seen astonishing advances in our understanding of the machinery of life, not only through the sequencing of the genomes of organisms, from bacteria to worms to people, but also by comparing and contrasting their biochemical workings. These studies have revealed the deep, unambiguous relatedness of all life on Earth, and are tracing our life line much further back than the fossil record ever could – right back to the start.

Biologists have long since thrown out the chaotic primordial soup as the setting for the origin of life – Mitchell was right about that, at least – in favour of the rocky submarine towers known as alkaline hydrothermal vents. Four billion years ago these were belching hydrogen gas into an ocean saturated with carbon dioxide, providing the raw materials for organic molecules. The towers are riddled with microscopic reaction chambers about the size of a bacterial cell, and their walls are lined with mineral catalysts.

In Lane's words, they make perfect "hatcheries of life". Biochemists are tantalisingly close to solving the riddle of how the basic reactions of life – including the hub about which all the chemistry of every cell turns, the Krebs cycle – could get started here without pre-existing proteins.

None of this will make easy reading for someone with no grounding in biochemistry – the text is thick with chemicals like pyruvate, ATP and acetyl thioester – and the other chapters present similar challenges. But Lane is a superb communicator. He knows exactly how much technical detail is required to provide satisfying explanations for the evolution of the genetic code, photosynthesis, complex cells, muscles and eyes, and his enthusiasm is catching.

Who wouldn't be intrigued to learn that the genetic code is not the "frozen accident" Francis Crick assumed, but that there is "code within the code"? That biochemists can look to the chemical properties of amino acids and DNA to trace the genesis of life's blueprint billions of years ago is astounding.

Of Lane's 10 great evolutionary inventions, the one that doesn't quite fit is consciousness. Sure, it's one hell of an innovation, but unlike the other nine there's an almost complete lack of evidence about its evolution, or even what it is. Lane has a lot to say about how the brain perceives the world and what it means to have "feelings", but the "hard problem" of consciousness is stuck fast in the realms of philosophy and speculation. By comparison the other chapters are so much more satisfying, bringing the reader bang up to date on the latest insights.

But I'm quibbling. Life Ascending earns its place on the bookshelf of every biology teacher – and anyone else interested in how we all got here.

This article was amended on 19 October 2010. The original referred to the 'Kreb's cycle'. This has been corrected.