Table of Contents

* Introduction The Age of Chemistry * The Search for Origins * The First Catalysts of Life * The Fuel of Emerging Life * The Advent of RNA The Age of Information * RNA Takes Over * The Code * Genes in the Making * Freedoms and Constraints The Age of the Protocell * Encapsulating Life * Turning Membranes into Machines * Adaptation to Life in Confinement * The Ancestor of All Life * The Universality of Life The Age of the Single Cell * Bacteria Conquer the World * The Making of a Eukaryote * The Primitive Phagocyte * The Guests that Stayed The Age of Multicellular Organisms * The Benefits of Cellular Collectivism * The Greening of the Earth * The First Animals * Animals Fill the Oceans * Animals Move Out of the Sea * The Web of Life * The Virtues of Junk DNA The Age of the Mind * The Step to Human * The Brain * The Workings of the Mind * The Works of the Mind * Values The Age of the Unknown * The Future of Life * The Meaning of Life

About the Author

Christian De Duve shared the 1974 Nobel Prize for Biology or Medicine with Albert Claude and George Palade for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell. he is Professor Emeritus at the Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain, Belgium, and Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus at the Rockefeller University in New York. He is also the author of A Guided Tour of the Living Cell and Blueprint for a Cell.