What Sustains Life?

1. Introduction

2. What Sustains Life? An Overview

3. The Pilgrimage: Highlights in Our Understanding of the Products and Components of Living Organisms

4. Likelihood of Life’s Protein Machines: Extravagant in Construction Yet Efficient in Function

5. Consilient Mechanisms for Diverse Protein-based Machines: The Efficient Comprehensive Hydrophobic Effect

6. On the Evolution of Protein-based Machines (Toward Complexity of Structure and Diversity of Function)

7. Biology Thrives Near a Movable Cusp of Insolubility

8. Consilient Mechanisms for Protein-based machines of Biology

9. Advanced Materials for the Future: Protein-based Materials with Potential to Sustain Individual Health and Societal Development

10. Epilogue

Avainsanat: Life Sciences, Evolutionary Biology, Biophysics/Biomedical Physics, Community & Population Ecology