Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

by Nick Lane

Overview

From the renowned biochemist and author of The Vital Question, an illuminating inquiry into the Krebs cycle and the origins of life.

“Nick Lane’s exploration of the building blocks that underlie life’s big fundamental questions—the origin of life itself, aging, and disease—have shaped my thinking since I first came across his work. He is one of my favorite science writers.”—Bill Gates

What brings the Earth to life, and our own lives to an end?

For decades, biology has been dominated by the study of genetic information. Information is important, but it is only part of what makes us alive. Our inheritance also includes our living metabolic network, a flame passed from generation to generation, right back to the origin of life. In Transformer, biochemist Nick Lane reveals a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight —how the same simple chemistry gives rise to life and causes our demise.

Lane is among the vanguard of researchers asking why the Krebs cycle, the “perfect circle” at the heart of metabolism, remains so elusive more than eighty years after its discovery. Transformer is Lane’s voyage, as a biochemist, to find the inner meaning of the Krebs cycle—and its reverse—why it is still spinning at the heart of life and death today.

Lane reveals the beautiful, violent world within our cells, where hydrogen atoms are stripped from the carbon skeletons of food and fed to the ravenous beast of oxygen. Yet this same cycle, spinning in reverse, also created the chemical building blocks that enabled the emergence of life on our planet. Now it does both. How can the same pathway create and destroy? What might our study of the Krebs cycle teach us about the mysteries of aging and the hardest problem of all, consciousness?

Transformer unites the story of our planet with the story of our cells—what makes us the way we are, and how it connects us to the origin of life. Enlivened by Lane’s talent for distilling and humanizing complex research, Transformer offers an essential read for anyone fascinated by biology’s great mysteries. Life is at root a chemical phenomenon: this is its deep logic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393651485
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/12/2022
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	36,438
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Nick Lane is professor of evolutionary biochemistry at University College London and an award-winning author of five books. He codirects UCL’s Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE) and lives in London. Bill Gates calls him “one of my favorite science writers.”

Table of Contents

Introduction: Life itself 1

1 Discovering the nanocosm 27

2 The path of carbon 74

3 From gases to life 112

4 Revolutions 155

5 To the dark side 191

6 The flux capacitor 233

Epilogue: Self 274

Envoi: 'Like Most Revelations' 285

The forward Krebs cycle 286

The reverse Krebs cycle 287

Appendix 1 Red protein mechanics 288

Appendix 2 The Krebs line 294

List of abbreviations 302

Further reading 305

Acknowledgements 368

Index 375

Editorial Reviews

06/20/2022

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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Bold . . . passionate . . . a dramatically revisionist account [of the] origins of life."

New Yorker - James Somers

"[An] indefatigable exploration of the genesis of biology . . . [Lane] beautifully lays out the sheer improbability of our biosphere, explains why life may be exceedingly rare in our universe, and considers death as a process, not simply as an instantaneous end. "

The Atlantic - Hamilton Cain

"[A] thrilling journey . . . the book is a tour de force."

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Laura Eme and Courtney W. Stairs

"The writing in the book is so articulate and the unfolding narrative so ambitious that one is carried along helter-skelter… The late Sir Hans would indeed be amazed."

South African Journal of Science - Wieland Gievers

"The story in Transformer is not just lively and engaging but filled with stimulating ideas about life’s origins and evolution. "

Nautilus - Philip Ball

2022-04-06
An enthusiastic, up-to-date overview of the biochemistry of life.

Lane, a professor of evolutionary biology and author of The Vital Question and Life Ascending, reminds us that energy flow animates cells and sets them apart from inanimate matter. All creatures produce energy, and all living tissues consume it; the second law of thermodynamics assures that this process is imperfect. The vicissitudes of life unravel the delicate symbiosis between living tissues, and hypoxia, infections, inflammation, and mutations all hamper energy flow. “Tissue function eventually becomes strained, biosynthetic pathways falter, ATP synthesis declines and the delicate web of symbiosis between tissues begins to fray,” writes the author. “And so we age.” Central to this “deep chemistry” is the Krebs cycle, a complex series of reactions whereby almost all cells break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to produce energy, with carbon dioxide and hydrogen as waste products. The process was discovered in the 1930s, and Lane does not conceal his amazement as he recounts the revelation, a generation later, that some primitive cells run the Krebs cycle in reverse, using carbon dioxide and hydrogen to make organic molecules. Furthermore, this reaction only occurs in the absence of oxygen and isn’t discouraged by the heat and toxic chemical conditions present on the young Earth and in deep-ocean hydrothermal vents today. As the mechanism for the primordial metabolism of life, it’s a prime candidate. Lane excels in describing the history of his subject, which includes many obsessive and not always magnanimous geniuses. The cycle itself includes a vast, complicated collection of chemical reactions that scientists are still exploring. “Most of the individual steps I’m going to show here,” writes the author, “are not ‘real,’ as the whole series occurs virtually instantaneously in a sort of soft-shoe shuffle.” A first-rate writer, Lane explains these concepts with a minimum of jargon, but readers unfamiliar with college biology and chemistry will struggle.

An exciting new approach to the science of life, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

Kirkus Reviews

"A thrilling tour of the remarkable stories behind the discoveries of some of life’s key metabolic pathways and mechanisms. [Lane] lays bare the human side of science… The book brings to life the chemistry that brings us to life. "

Science - Joseph Moran

"Hugely ambitious and tremendously exciting."

Olivia Judson

"In this compulsively readable book, Lane takes us on a riveting journey, ranging from the flow of energy to new ways of understanding cancer."

Siddhartha Mukherjee

"I loved every page of Nick Lane’s new book."

Lee Smolin

"Transformer is a complex yet accessible, illuminating, and thrilling exploration of the vitality and elemental mysteries of our existence."

Booklist - George Kendall

"One of the most creative of today's biologists ... this is a book filled with big ideas, many of which are bold instances of lateral thinking. "

New Scientist - Michael Marshall

"In this fascinating book, Nick Lane brings together biology, chemistry, and physics to illuminate the role of energy in bringing matter alive."

Sean Carroll

"Nick Lane’s marvelously engaging Transformer refocused my astronomer’s gaze on the vital chemistry of life on our own planet."

John Grunsfeld

"This is probably the best book on biology (and more specifically biochemistry) that I've ever read."

Brian Clegg