Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) paints a colorful picture of the man!
What a legendary place.
Notably, it does not undergo crossover.
All pages below are from the second edition from 2018. It seems that there weren't any changes in the text, the updated preface mentions
As it happens, nearly 15 years have passed since the 1st edition of Power, Sex, Suicide was published, and I am resisting the temptation to make any lame revisions. Some say that even Darwin lessened the power of his arguments in the Origin of Species through his multiple revisions, in which he dealt with criticisms and sometimes shifted his views in the wrong direction. I prefer my original to speak for itself, even if it turns out to be wrong.
This is partly addressed in the preface of the second edition from 2018.
Central thesis:
- there are two sexes because of mitochondria
- the acquisition of mitochondria was one of the most important steps in the evolution of eukaryotes.There are no known eukaryotes which never had mitochondria. Having mitochondria appears to be a requisite for being an eukaryote.Contrast this for example with multicellularity, which is highly polyphyletic.
- Apoptosis is largely regulated by mitochondria
- there are two main theories for how the mitochondria endosymbiosis started:
- parsitic hypothesis of mitochondrial endosymbiosis: a parasitic option rather than cooperative
- hydrogen hypothesis: a cooperative option rather than parasitic
Smaller points:
- 10% of our body weight (dry presumably?) is mitochondria. Also quoted at: www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/mighty_mitochondria. TODO confirm.
- eukaryotes can do phatocytosis due to their cytoskeleton
- paints a colorful picture of Peter Mitchell. Some Wikipedia edits are warranted!
- it is hard for complex organisms to evolve because longer DNA means longer replication time
- cancer is natural selection gone wrong
- multicellular organisms are not utopias where every cell lives happily. Rather, they are dictatorships, where any dissident is forced to commit seppuku. Lu Xun's petition quote comes to mind.
Nitpicks:
- the book calls ATP synthase "ATPase" in several points, which is confusing because -ase means "something that breaks", and in 2020 parlance, there are ATPases which actually break ATP: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATPase. The book itself acknowledges that on page 135:
The ATPase is freely reversible. Under some circumstances it can go into reverse, whereupon it splits ATP, and uses the energy released to pump protons up the drive shaft, back across the membrane against the pressure of the reservoir. In fact the very name ATPase (rather than ATP synthase) signifies this action, which was discovered first. This bizarre trait hides a deep secret of life, and we’ll return to it in a moment.
Some criticisms:
- some of the later chapters are a bit more boring, like the stuff about warm-blooded animals. Perhaps is it that Ciro Santilli is more interested in the molecular aspects than macro
- the author talks about some very recent research at the time. While this does highlight his expertise, some of the points mentioned might still be in a state of flow. This is acknowledged by the author himself on the 2018 updated preface however.
How to use an Oxford Nanopore MinION to extract DNA from river water and determine which bacteria live in it Sequencing by 
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16With X-ray crystallography by David Chilton Phillips. The second protein to be resolved fter after myoglobin, and the first enzyme.
Published at: Structure of Hen Egg-White Lysozyme: A Three-dimensional Fourier Synthesis at 2 Å Resolution (1965). The work was done while at the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory of the Royal Institution.
Phillips also published a lower resolution (6angstrom) of the enzyme-inhibitor complexes at about the same time: Structure of Some Crystalline Lysozyme-Inhibitor Complexes Determined by X-Ray Analysis At 6 Å Resolution (1965). The point of doing this is that it points out the active site of the enzyme.
Technique widely used to measure the size of DNA strands, most often PCR output of a region of interest.
A simple sample application is gel electrophoresis alelle determination.
- 1982 www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.80.6.1579 DNA fragments differing by single base-pair substitutions are separated in denaturing gradient gels by Fischer and Lerman (1982). It is possible then.
Some key specs:
- SoC:
- name: RP2040. Custom designed by Raspberry Pi Foundation, likely the first they make themselves rather than using a Broadcom chip. But the design still is closed source, likely wouldn't be easy to open source due to the usage of closed proprietary IP like the ARM
- dual core ARM Cortex-M0+
- frequency: 2 kHz to 133 MHz, 125 MHz by default
- memory: 264KB on-chip SRAM
- GPIO voltage: 3.3V
- Dilbert
- Severance 2022
- tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoulCrushingDeskJob
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- Falling Down 1993
The conventional starting point is not at the E. Coli K-12 MG1655 origin of replication.
biocyc.org/ECOLI/NEW-IMAGE?type=EXTRAGENIC-SITE&object=G0-10506 explains:If it is a bit hard to understand what they mean by "origin of transfer" though, as that term is usually associated with the origin of transfer of bacterial conjugation.
This site is the origin of replication of the E. coli chromosome. It contains the binding sites for DnaA, which is critical for initiation of replication. Replication proceeds bidirectionally. For historical reasons, the numbering of E. coli's circular chromosome does not start at the origin of replication, but at the origin of transfer during conjugation.
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
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- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
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This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
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All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
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