Nick Lane

I would say yes.

Do we think that they evolved?

I would say yes.

I think any evolutionary biologist would say yes to those questions.

If it's real and it evolved, then natural selection must be able to see it and act on it in some way.

In other words, there's something physical about it that can be selected for.

Again, I don't think there's anything controversial about that statement.

But then if it's physical and real and has been selected on, the implication is we should be able to measure it.

There should be, it has to offer an advantage for selection to act on.

And if it's a physical process, it should be measurable.

But we don't really know what we're trying to measure here.

So I then kind of revert back to thinking, okay, what would a bacterial cell need to do?

And this is just kind of...

back of the envelope thinking.

And I immediately think about metabolism.

What's the difference between the inside of a bacterial cell and the outside world?

It's basically, you know, the inside is metabolically alive.

It's doing stuff with its chemistry all the time.

And it's at a colossal rate.

A bacterial cell will have about a billion reactions every second in this metabolism.