The Evolution of Life

The origin of cells remains one of the most fundamental problems in biology, one that over the past two decades has spawned a large body of research and debate. With In Search of Cell History, Franklin M. Harold offers a comprehensive, impartial take on that research and the controversies that keep the field in turmoil.

This book describes the interlaced histories of life and oxygen. It opens with the generation of the element in ancient stars, and its distribution to newly formed planets like the Earth. But free O2 was not available on the early Earth, so the first life forms had to be anaerobic. Life introduced free O2 into the environment through the evolution of photosynthesis.