I am reading The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, by Natalie Angier. It is taking me a while, as I am simultaneously reading several other books. And The Canon is somewhat dense reading. Factually dense. It is fascinating, but each paragraph is full of so much information that I read a few pages, then take some time to digest it.
Last night, I was reading about proteins in the chapter on molecular biology. In writing about enzymes, she shares this gem:
"Because structural proteins can be as bustling and busybodied as any of the bodies textbook pyrotechnic, some scientists argue that all proteins are enzymes, are engines of change, and life, and levity. The word "enzyme" means "to leaven," an entymological tip of the hat to the yeasty proteins that leaven bread, and wine, and thou. "L'chaim," too, is thought to share etymological roots with "zyme." It is the Hebrew toast to be spoken at a feast, over an alcoholic beverage of the toaster's choosing, and it means, quite literally, "to life."
Lovely. This book so balances science and art with wonderful wordplay and flight of thought. Always coherent, but nevertheless, freewheeling.
[Image from the University of Chicago]
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