Transformer
The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
'One of my favourite science writers' Bill Gates
'Hugely important' Jim Al-Khalili
'A profound meditation on metabolism, the Krebs cycle & the origin of life' Anil Seth
For decades, biology has been dominated by information - the power of genes. Yet there is no difference in information content between a living cell and one that died a moment ago. A better question goes back to the formative years of biology: what processes animate cells and set them apart from lifeless matter?
In Transformer, Nick Lane turns the standard view upside down, capturing an extraordinary scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight. At its core is an amazing cycle of reactions that uses energy to transform inorganic molecules into the building blocks of life - and the reverse. To understand this cycle is to fathom the deep coherence of the living world. It connects the origin of life with the devastation of cancer, the first photosynthetic bacteria with our own mitochondria, sulphurous sludges with the emergence of consciousness, and the trivial differences between ourselves with the large-scale history of our planet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biochemist Lane (The Vital Question) digs into the "merry-go-round of energy and matter known as the Krebs cycle" in this dense and demanding outing. "For decades, biology has been dominated by information—the power of genes," Lane writes, and aims to shift the focus instead to energy, which he writes "conjures... genes themselves into existence and still determines their activity, even in our information-soaked lives." To that end, he devotes chapters to topics related to the process involved in cellular respiration known as the Krebs cycle, discussing how spontaneous chemical reactions in the heat and pressure of undersea vents could have generated the basic building blocks of life in Earth's early days; how the Krebs cycle is involved in cancer; what the cycle can reveal about ageing; and proposing that energy "has to correspond in some way to the stream of consciousness." Unfortunately, he assumes readers will come equipped with a background in chemistry, suggesting at one point, for example, that "you can probably see where I'm going with this" before concluding that "when forwards flux through the Krebs cycle is impaired, cancer cells can make citrate by converting a-ketoglutarate into isocitrate, then citrate, through reverse flux." General readers can give this one a pass.
