Smarter Faster: The enzyme that shaped life, revived
Will it help solve 21st-century problems?
with Stephen Johnson • Thu 27 February, 2025
Hey Big Thinkers,
There’s a Big Think article from 2024 that I often think about. Called “Mapping time: The surprising overlaps of history’s most influential minds,” the piece plots the lifespans of historical figures on a “map” that shows how famous figures from seemingly different eras were contemporaries, like Eminem and J.R.R. Tolkien, and Joe Biden and Nikola Tesla.
Interesting trivia, sure. But I like it because it helps me understand and give scale to the past, something I’ve always struggled to wrap my mind around. Exhibit A: I think of Jesus and Julius Caesar as people who lived long, long ago, in an ancient past entirely disconnected from today. But really, they walked the Earth just about 28 human lifetimes ago. A blink of history’s eye.
Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history is much harder to grasp. Those timespans defy comprehension; the gap between then and now is so abstract that it might as well be quadrillions of years.
So, this week we bring you a feature that peers directly into Earth’s ancient past, offering an inside look at a project that’s resurrecting ancient versions of a protein that enabled all life on our planet to thrive.
Read on,
Stephen
THE BIG STUDY
The lab that’s resurrecting ancient proteins to unlock life’s secrets
“I want to change the way we think about the past altogether,” Dr. Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist who studies the origin of life, tells Big Think. “We think of it as some failed state, as if it’s irrelevant. That’s just not true.” At first, Kaçar’s new project might not sound so philosophical: It aims to resurrect ancient versions of nitrogenase, a crucial enzyme that sustains life on Earth, to learn how it survived environmental upheavals throughout Earth’s early history. But insights from her research could prove profound, helping us learn more about life’s past and future — both on Earth and potentially across the cosmos.
Fast Stats
1940s — The decade when early forms of reality TV began to emerge.
7 — The lessons introverted leaders can learn from this handy guide.
7 — The anti-science myths that threaten modern society, according to astrophysicist Ethan Siegel.
27 — The number of words in Microsoft Research’s mission statement, drafted in the early 1990s.
THE BIG SEARCH
The quest for a “communication device” that tells cells to regenerate the body
What’s the long-term endgame of regenerative medicine — the field that aims to harness the body’s natural healing mechanisms to repair, replace, or regenerate damaged tissues and organs? For biologist Michael Levin, it would be the ability to “talk” to our cells, directing them to accomplish large-scale goals: restoring organ function, regenerating a lost limb, or building entirely new biological structures. It sounds like science fiction. But then again, so do some of the weird, regenerative findings that Levin and his colleagues have already demonstrated in their lab.
MINI PHILOSOPHY
Why you must be logical and scientific to be a good person
By Jonny Thomson
I try to enjoy myself every day. I’m somewhat of a pleasure addict. I collect thrills, hoard comfort, and desperately seek joyful experiences. Now, I haven’t surveyed the entirety of the human race, but I’d suspect that most people, like me, want to experience a degree of pleasure. This is an unproven, yet mostly plausible, fact about the world: almost everyone likes pleasure.
Now, watch closely as I perform a little philosophical conjuring trick. Because now, I’m going to say, “Therefore, it’s morally good to create as much pleasure for as many people as possible.” I’ve leapt from a fact to an ethical statement before you can say, “Naturalistic fallacy.”
If you find this logically distasteful, then hold on to your Tractatus, because it’s going to get worse. Now, I’m going to say, “Therefore, it’s ethically important that we scientifically investigate what makes humans happy.” We have to learn about psychology, biology, and pay close attention to well-being studies.
See how I dance from fact to value and back to fact, all with the occasional sprinkling of logic? According to Massimo Pigliucci and the Stoics in this week’s Mini Philosophy article, this is what a fulfilling and happy life looks like.
Science + Ethics + Logic = Happiness.
Read on to find out more.
Popular
How charges and masses create the Universe around us
How tiny experiments can lead to exponential outcomes
The Swedish philosophy of lagom: How “just enough” is all you need
The leadership trends that will shape 2025
THE BIG UPGRADE
GPS jamming, a weapon in hot and hybrid wars, will soon be obsolete
In 2024, Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 lost its GPS signal and crashed in Kazakhstan — likely the result of Russian electronic warfare. It’s not the first time GPS jamming has cost lives. But a new breakthrough in inertial navigation could enable aircraft to navigate the skies without relying on satellite-based positioning systems, rendering GPS jamming obsolete. That doesn’t necessarily mean the skies will be entirely safer, however.
WORTH SHARING
We’re able to create new creatures through gene editing. What’s stopping us?
The real question isn’t whether we can sculpt new life, says Dr. Josie Zayner. The real question is what comes next. In the lab of Zayner’s new company, the Los Angeles Project (LAP), scientists are learning to harvest large amounts of embryos and eggs from different animal species in order to understand the development of life on a scale no one has tried before.
The Spark of Life is so interesting to me. The primordial soup in one thing, and then there's are the instructions to give the stuff desire to live - where does that come from?