The Music of Life Biology Beyond Genes

by Noble, Denis

• ISBN13: 9780199295739
• ISBN10: 0199295735
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-07-13
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The gene's eye view of life, proposed in Richard Dawkins acclaimed bestseller The Selfish Gene, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of genetic codes. But in The Music of Life, world renowned physiologist Denis Noble argues that, to truly understand life, we must look beyond the "selfish gene" to consider life on a much wider variety of levels. Life, Noble asserts, is a kind of music, a symphonic interplay between genes, cells, organs, body, and environment. He weaves this musical metaphor throughout this personal and deeply lyrical work, illuminating ideas that might otherwise be daunting to non-scientists. In elegant prose, Noble sets out a cutting-edge alternative to the gene's eye view, offering a radical switch of perception in which genes are seen as prisoners and the organism itself is a complex system of many interacting levels. In his more expansive view, life emerges as a process, the ebb and flow of activity in an intricate web of connections. He introduces readers to the realm of systems biology, a field that has been growing in strength in the past decade. Noble, himself one of the founders of this field, argues modern systems biology may be the view we need to adopt to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of life. Drawing on his experiences in his research on the heartbeat, and on evolutionary biology, development, medicine, philosophy, linguistics, and Chinese culture, Noble presents us with a profound and very modern reflection on the nature of life. "A beautifully written book... After the great successes of molecular biology, the time has come to re-assemble the organism. Denis Noble tells us why this needs to be done. He also tells us how we should go about it. Strongly recommended." --Sir Patrick Bateson, Emeritus Professor of Ethology, Cambridge "In this highly evocative essay, eminent physiologist Noble argues that a dominant metaphor in biology is blocking the path to further understanding." --The Guardian

Author Biography

Denis Noble, CBE, FRS, is Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford and is widely regarded as one of the popular proponents (and a very early founder of) of systems biology. He was Chairman of the IUPS World Congress in 1993, and Secretary-General of IUPS from 1993-2001. He played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, one of the international components of the systems biology approach, and Science included him amongst its review authors for its issue devoted to the subject in 2002.
His previous publications include the seminal set of essays The Logic of Life (Boyd and Noble, OUP 1993), and he frequently appears in newspapers, and on TV and radio.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
The CD of Life: the Genome	1	(22)
Introducing the Silmans	1	(2)
DNA-mania	3	(3)
Problems with genetic determinism	6	(5)
Origin of the appeal of genetic determinism	11	(4)
Life is not a protein soup	15	(2)
Mapping the alternative metaphors	17	(6)
The Organ of 30,000 Pipes	23	(10)
The Chinese Emperor and the poor farmer	23	(4)
The genome and combinatorial explosion	27	(4)
An organ of 30 000 pipes	31	(2)
The Score: is it Written Down?	33	(9)
Is the genome the `book of life'?	33	(2)
The French bistro omelette	35	(2)
The ambiguity of language	37	(2)
The Silmans return	39	(3)
The Conductor: Downward Causation	42	(13)
How is the genome played?	42	(1)
Is the genome a program?	43	(3)
Control of gene expression	46	(2)
Downward causation takes many forms	48	(1)
Other forms of downward causation	49	(2)
Where is the program of life?	51	(4)
The Rhythm Section: the Heartbeat and other Rhythms	55	(19)
Beginnings of biological computation	55	(1)
Reconstructing heart rhythm: the first attempt	56	(5)
The integrative level of heart rhythm	61	(4)
Systems biology is not `vitalism' in disguise	65	(1)
Nor is it reductionism in disguise	65	(2)
Other natural rhythms	67	(7)
The Orchestra: Organs and Systems of the Body	74	(14)
Novartis Foundation debates	74	(1)
Problems with bottom-up	75	(3)
Problems with top-down	78	(1)
Middle-out!	79	(3)
The organs of the body	82	(1)
The virtual heart	83	(5)
Modes and Keys: Cellular Harmony	88	(13)
The Silmans find some tropical islands	88	(4)
The Silmans' mistake	92	(1)
Genetic basis of cell differentiation	93	(3)
Modes and keys	96	(1)
Multicellular harmony	97	(2)
A historical note on `Lamarckism'	99	(2)
The Composer: Evolution	101	(12)
The Chinese writing system	101	(2)
Modularity in genes	103	(1)
Gene-protein networks	104	(2)
Fail-safe redundancy	106	(3)
Faustian pacts with the devil	109	(2)
The logic of life	111	(1)
The grand composer	112	(1)
The Opera Theatre: the Brain	113	(22)
How do we see the world?	114	(5)
At Aziz' restaurant	119	(3)
Action and will: a physiologist and a philosopher experiment	122	(3)
Explanatory shift between levels	125	(3)
The self is not a neural object	128	(3)
The deep-frozen brain	131	(1)
The resurrected self?	132	(3)
Curtain Call: the Artist Disappears	135	(9)
Jupitereans	135	(2)
Role of culture in our view of the self and the brain	137	(4)
The self as metaphor	141	(2)
The artist disappears	143	(1)
Bibliography	144	(3)
Index	147