Event Review: What Is Life and How Does It Work?

YouTube really is a wonderful place; you can just as easily be watching a funny video as you can a talk on your deepest existential thoughts. If you find yourself in need of the latter, you might be interested in Dr Philip Ball's talk at the Royal Institution in London, entitled 'What Is Life and How Does It Work'.

The Royal Institution is a charity that aims to connect the public to the world of science, with a series of events that allow experts and advocates to share their love of science. In his talk Dr Ball, a prolific science writer and broadcaster, walks us viewers through a deconstruction of the central dogma of molecular biology and explores how life might work.

Dr Ball begins by reflecting on how useful it would be for humans to have an instruction manual. For this to be possible, we would firstly need to know how life works. He then takes us on a 50-minute ride through the answers biologists have found to this lifelong question.

Early on, Dr Ball challenges the idea that DNA offers the secret of life by metaphorically comparing DNA to a musical score. Just as an orchestra is needed to produce music, so the mere existence of DNA does not translate into life, even though it is necessary for life to exist. So, how do we get from DNA to life?

The central dogma of molecular biology is that genetic information flows only in one direction – from DNA, to RNA, to protein. Dr Ball demonstrates that this is something of a fallacy. For example, humans have more noncoding genes than coding genes, which highlights one of the biggest pitfalls of research – 'we tend to see only the things we expect to see, and we tend to study only those things that we have techniques for studying'.

Dr Ball discusses why life 'works in a fuzzy analogue'. Complexity requires the pressure of success to be removed from the lower levels of the system, and to be controlled by the higher levels. In this context, we remove pressure from the genes, allowing mistakes to be compensated for further along the line – what is known as causal emergence.

One example used by Dr Ball to illustrate this is the fact that we have five digits on each of our hands. As you may suspect by now, the number of fingers we should have is not encoded in our DNA, but rather is caused by the concentration of certain proteins in a stripe manner. We have five fingers, because no more than five stripes can fit in the embryonic limb bud! This might have been the only moment in Dr Ball's talk when I thought that maybe life is not so complex after all.

Dr Ball shows that higher complexity in organisms correlates with a higher causal emergence. He argues that the brain is the best example of this, as unlike bacteria, which always face similar environments and challenges, humans constantly face new environments and problems. Thus, the necessity of 'fuzzy rules of thumb', that allow us to respond quickly through cognitive processing.

To eat and reproduce have always been seen as the fundamental goals of every organism. But Dr Ball defends the provocative idea that a sense of agency, involving manipulation of the self and the environment, may be what determines life and differentiates entities from organisms all the way down to single cells (similar cells may respond differently to the same stimulus).

Dr Ball discusses how manipulation of organisms and cells may be important in medicine, and very briefly touches on cell reprogramming and how scientists can develop organoids and stem-cell-based embryo models. Unlike the rest of his talk, this part feels slightly rushed and lacking in consideration of ethical implications.

Dr Ball concludes by stating that reducing life to genes, and comparing it to the workings of a machine, 'banishes life altogether from biology'. As you might have noticed, the title of his talk is somewhat deceptive, as we still have no definitive answer to what life is and how it works. However, Dr Ball reminds us that we are here, and we are aware, and it is the job of biologists and other scientists to 'understand and explain that'.

Overall, this talk offers a curated overview of current knowledge in molecular biology. The visual aids could perhaps be more modern and dynamic, but that is secondary with a gifted storyteller like Dr Ball. I had hoped to hear other topics touched on, such as epigenetics and the growing field of 3D genomics (see BioNews 784), but there are obvious time restraints when grappling with the open-ended question 'What is life?'.

Dr Ball's talk is captivating, and I particularly like how he simplifies complex processes with metaphors. It's the biology class I wish I had when I was studying for my university access biology exam.

Dr Philip Ball will be a part of the judging panel for the inaugural Marcus Pembrey BioNews Writing Competition.

The competition is open to anyone, aged from 18-30, who is interesting in submitting a comment piece about which scientific or legal development in fertility, genomics or embryo research in the last 25 years they think will have the greatest impact in the next 25 years.

More information on prizes and how to enter can be found here.