Chemical Evolution: The Biological System of the Elements
2015ref. 12663Hardcover xvii 282 pages NOT ex-library. Book is clean and bright throughout with crisp pages and unmarked text free of inscriptions and stamps firmly bound. A small corner indentation to a portion of leaves. Boards show gentle handling wear to the edges. Issued without a dust jacket. -- The book explores how chemical elements shaped the emergence and function of life by tracing their roles from cosmic origins to biological systems - offering researchers and advanced students a physicochemical framework to decode elemental essentiality toxicity and evolutionary adaptation. -- The book begins with astrophysical element synthesis since the Big Bang examining how interstellar organics meteoritic compounds and planetary conditions provided raw materials for prebiotic chemistry. It then analyzes pathways of chemical evolution leading to abiogenesis emphasizing flow systems thermal gradients like hydrothermal vents and aqueous-phase adaptations that reverse expected ion behaviors such as Na/K membrane dynamics. A core contribution is the Biological System of Elements BSE which reconfigures the periodic table using geochemical and physiological data - critiquing its classical form - to reveal abundance correlations enzyme-level impacts and autocatalytic feedbacks tied to metalloproteins structured along dimensions of aggregation capacity salinity response and biochemical affinity. Stoichiometric Network Analysis SNA formalizes these relationships into non-equations predicting essentiality or toxicity based on redox states and complexation potential including pharmaceutical cases like Cr in diabetes and Li in mental health. Later chapters apply this framework to environmental compartments - water soil atmosphere - and extend it to comparative planetology via missions targeting Mars Europa Titan and exoplanets while an extensive appendix catalogs elemental functions across taxa. -- This work stands apart by integrating cosmic chemistry network thermodynamics and organismal physiology into a single predictive architecture - still relevant for astrobiology mission design ecotoxicological risk modeling and understanding metal-dependent disease mechanisms in medicine; its value lies in providing a transferable logic for why certain elements became biologically indispensable or disruptive under specific physicochemical constraints. Springer hardcover
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