Life’s Ratchet

How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos

By: Peter M. Hoffman

Narrated by: Paul Hodgson

Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being?

In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale. The complex molecules of our cells can rightfully be called "molecular machines", or "nanobots"; these machines, unlike any other, work autonomously to create order out of chaos. Tiny electrical motors turn electrical voltage into motion, tiny factories custom-build other molecular machines, and mechanical machines twist, untwist, separate, and package strands of DNA. The cell is like a city - an unfathomable, complex collection of molecular worker bees working together to create something greater than themselves.

Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through the sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. We are essentially giant assemblies of interacting nanoscale machines; machines more amazing than can be found in any science fiction novel. Incredibly, the molecular machines in our cells function without a mysterious "life force", nor do they violate any natural laws. Scientists can now prove that life is not supernatural, and that it can be fully understood in the context of science.

Part history, part cutting-edge science, part philosophy, Life’s Ratchet takes us from ancient Greece to the laboratories of modern nanotechnology to tell the story of our quest for the machinery of life.

©2012 Peter M. Hoffman (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

This book blew my mind, aka my brain!

I am going to listen to this one again there was a lot to unpack. Great book!

From molecular storm to chance and necessity

Fascinating explanation of some of life’s mysteries— for lay readers like me — at the nanometer scale. This gets interwoven with a recap of important discoveries as scientists have groped and grappled along the way to discovery.

Minor quibbles:

1) The author evidently felt compelled to repeat
himself at times to ensure readers stayed with him;

2) For this reader it would have been helpful to hear more about how energy gets transformed to do so many important things at the molecular level. Does ATP, for example, serve as the cell’s energy currency always and everywhere by releasing vibrational energy? Perhaps the author has more to share with us in the future...

All in all, quibbles aside, a rich way to spend eight hours listening!

Very good book

Very interesting to read. Highly recommended! I learned a lot, the book goes into detail but is easy to follow.

a great book

The first chapters are a review of western thinking about science and life from ancient Greece forward, which did not excite me. Eventually the book delves into current understanding of the components of life at the level of molecular machines and how they survive and make use of the incredibly powerful frenzied chaos of Brownian motion. A well written explanation of the amazing complexity of a living cell. The conclusion turns back to philosophical ideas about the life,universe,and everything, which I enjoyed as it was based on a much deeper understanding of what is happening than the ancients, or anyone until very recently could have any clue.

The reader's pronouncements are distracting, not sure if he speaks a dialect correctly or was unfamiliar with the vocabulary, but once you get used to that, the reading is very good.

a very great book!

What makes something "alive"?

Great story overall. Is obviously a subject the author has thought about a lot, cares about, and on which is a technical expert. Can get a little too technical sometimes, but otherwise a good mix of philosophy, science, and storytelling.

Comprehensive approach to a complex subject.

Some repetition but it was needed and useful for those of us who had a long absence from the classroom! Overall an enjoyable and stimulating listen.

For biologists to learn single molecule biophysics

I loved this book. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars. I was trained as a molecular biologist, and I am very well versed in the theory of how the processes of life work. DNA to RNA to protein, all about cell biology, which proteins are important for what, etc. However, molecular biophysics, quantitative and single molecule approaches have always interested me, but been to far out of my comfort zone for me to engage to closely with. This book did an excellent job at helping me bridge that gap in my knowledge, and I now feel comfortable understanding how a protein can use the energy of an ATP molecule to perform an energetically unfavorable reaction, for instance. The history of the scientific understanding of vital forces and what animates life was also illuminating.

However, I suspect that this book might not appeal to very many people. The history section, the nanoscale physics section, and the section on how specific motor proteins work were all interesting to me, but I can't imagine very many people have both a sufficient biological background to understand the later chapters in the book, and an insufficient knowledge of physics to appreciate the earlier chapters, lucky for me, I fit the bill. I also have an strong interest in the history of science, so the history of vital forces was also interesting.

This book also had a great section on Maxwell's Demon, or using information to break the second law of thermodynamics, which I had always wanted a more satisfying answer to.

My two main criticisms are:
1 - The jumps between the different sections - molecular noise, history of vital forces, molecular motors - seemed almost like the author has learned a lot about each subject and wanted to include it all in his book. It seemed a little disjointed; I liked it but I suspect others might find it a bit scattered.

2 - The narrator is pretty good, but mispronounces a TON of words. At first I thought maybe the Brits just pronounce many many words differently than in the US, but many words were definitely wrong, and some seemed to change over the course of the book. I wish the narrator had taken a break when he didn't know a word to look it up, because it takes you out of the book. The most egregious example was calling the 5' and 3' ends of DNA the 5 inch and 3 inch ends, instead of 5 prime and 3 prime ends. I don't know how he could have made this mistake, because even if he was completely clueless, ' means foot, not inch.

This book is about the nanoscale, but he mispronounced nanometer. He pronounced Feynman as Faneman. These are but of few of the many many mistakes. But his narration was pretty good.

How order arises from molecular chaos

This is an excellent explanation of how the molecular machines of life (the DNA replicators, the ribosomes, the membrane pumps, etc) arose from the random molecular storm. Mr. Hoffman does a great job in explaining the role of chance and physics in this process. I also enjoyed his recount of the history of man's struggle with uncovering these discoveries.

I think those readers without any science background might find the later chapters a challenge.

A wonderful science book

A lot of in-depth thinking required. Simply mind-boggling. Protein motors! Ten million ribosomes in each of the 30 trillion human cells!
All of this starts with two cells at conception—all self-generating. Walking myosins, When you don't understand something, go to Khan Academy - AP/College Biology. I will listen over and over. The human body is more complicated than the universe :) But the universe contains billions of human bodies!

Excellent convergence biology, physics and chemistry to describe life systems

While many books and articles pertain only to one aspect of the systems and components of living beings, this book brings together multiple disciplines each of which have made enormous contributions to our current understandings of the workings of living beings. It is only by collaboration that we will be able to efficiently and effectively continue to evolve our insights.