Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

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To grasp the Krebs cycle is to fathom the deep coherence of biology. It connects the first photosynthetic bacteria with our own peculiar cells. It links the emergence of consciousness with the inevitability of death. And it puts the subtle differences between individuals in the same grand story as the rise of the living world itself. An exhilarating account of the biophysics of life, stretching from the first stirrings of living matter to the psychology of consciousness. I felt as if I was there, every step of the way’ A thrilling tour of the remarkable stories behind the discoveries of some of life’s key metabolic pathways and mechanisms. He lays bare the human side of science… The book brings to life the chemistry that brings us to life. Joseph Moran, Science Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected Unlike most popular science books, this one is short on “wow factor”— information amazing enough to wake up the non-specialist nodding off amongst the molecules. But it does reveal that we’re each made of up “at least 30 trillion cells,” all of which go through “a billion metabolic reactions every second.” That means the cells of a man in his mid-50s like the book’s author have already gone through reactions numbering 10 to the 32nd power, “roughly a billion times the number of stars in the known universe.”

Lane is British and makes no concessions to American English. Experiments work “first go,” not first try. We fly in aeroplanes and put on jumpers instead of sweaters. And in the fall, perhaps we engage in a programme of maths or simply enjoy the tonne of colours in the trees. In anoxygenic photosynthesis, chlorophyll is used to strip electrons from H2S which are then passed onto ferredoxin directly. The waste product is not oxygen but sulfur. The huge advantage here is that the sun now powers the transfer of electrons, without the need for burning fuel to power pumping. The disadvantage is that these bacteria still derive all their electrons from geological sources such as volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. I reluctantly rate this book 3.5/5. It’s really well-written and enjoyable in spots, but I found myself slogging through the rest. I wouldn’t say that this is a book in search of an audience, but the audience has to be carefully found. The reverse Krebs cycle requires an input of energy (ATP) to work, which in modern bacteria is normally obtained from photosynthesis. H2 will react with CO2, using iron–sulfide catalysts, but works best at pressures of around 100 bar, equivalent to an ocean depth of about 1 kilometre. What’s new is that the reactions that make up the Krebs cycle and onwards can occur spontaneously. The Krebs cycle is the engine of life, turning gases into living things. Genes emerged from this metabolic whirl. But now we’re faced with a strange situation: the Krebs cycle simultaneously creates and destroys, giving it a yin and yang that (I argue) still dictates how our genes work, including our risk of diseases. 2. Metabolism gives meaning to genetic information.In glycosis, pyruvate is converted to lactate, allowing the cell to produce small amounts of ATP in the absence of oxygen. Warburg noted the propensity of cancers to ferment glucose in the presence of oxygen. However, many cancers don’t depend on aerobic glycolysis at all, normal tissues are also capable of aerobic glycolysis, and stem cells typically depend on ATP from aerobic glycolysis for their energy needs. pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors. The underlying problem in cancer is an environment that continuously and erroneously shouts ‘grow!’. This toxic environment can be induced by mutations, infections, low oxygen levels … or the decline in metabolism associated with ageing itself. Perhaps the only real critique I can make of the book regards the bit at the end about consciousness. Lane’s presentation of the hard problem of consciousness, as well as his argument for electric fields as a causative agent of consciousness, warranted more of a footnote than an epilogue. His arguments here weren’t particularly strong, and I almost think he’d be the first to admit this.

The Krebs cycle is more of a roundabout than a complete cycle. The traffic flow of metabolism has to be controlled to do particular jobs. The single-celled organisms that came before animals could mostly do one thing at a time, so they needed to adjust their traffic flow. But animals have multiple tissues and can balance traffic flow through the Krebs cycle in one tissue differently than in another tissue. It’s a kind of symbiosis between mutually dependent tissues. Life started out using the Krebs cycle to convert gases into living cells—the engine of biosynthesis. But modern animals use it for biosynthesis and to generate energy. They can’t spin the cycle in both directions at the same time, so how did they manage?

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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. Most bacteria and archaea don't use a closed Kreb's cycle; rather they use a forked pathway that allows them to adapt to oxygen availability. Lane suggests that the Ediacaran fauna (500 million years before the Cambrian) had little tissue differentiation and were unable to adapt to changing environmental conditions. In contrast, the bilateral ancestors of the Cambrian fauna had a variety of tissues that could work together to seek metabolic balance. By the dawn of the Cambrian, they were able to deal with oxygen and "Rising oxygen just gave them a turbocharge." Every life sciences major remembers learning about the Krebs cycle in college; if your undergraduate experience was anything like mine, then you also remember forgetting it immediately. When we learn about this cycle at the heart of metabolism, it’s presented almost exclusively in the context of energy production. Producing ATP is important, but so is generating the macromolecules that come to constitute tissues and organs. Metabolism does both, utilizing the Krebs cycle as a sort of roundabout to accomplish the needs of the cell. Metabolism is the sum total of reactions occurring in an organism at any one moment. Metabolism keeps us alive—it is what being alive is. In one of our own cells, there are more than a billion metabolic reactions every second. That’s about a hundred billion trillion reactions in the last second, or a billion times the number of stars in the known universe. These reactions don’t all work properly, and damage inevitably accumulates.

ageing, related diseases and cancer newly explained as consequences of slowing and reversing the Krebs cycle Transformer is a monstrous tome. And it's even more of a chimera in audiobook form. Having read the author's previous book, The Vital Question, I knew a bit of what to expect, a high-level explanation of an important biochemical process, with all the history, false starts, important scientists and, most crucially, the chemistry behind it. 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.

About the book

Ageing is not driven by mutations in genes accumulating over time, but by changes in gene activity – epigenetics.

The response to drugs can vary dramatically, depending on a few tiny differences in mitochondrial DNA, with big differences in outcome between males and females. When you were a medical student, you were told to sit down, shut up, raise your hand when you wanted to go to the bathroom, and memorize a whole bunch of strange names of carboxylic acids that make up the Krebs cycle. I thought this was a gigantic waste of time and had nothing to do with the practice of medicine.

For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee I read several of previous Lane's books, namely Vital Question, Life Ascending and Oxygen. My thinking about origins of life was since dominantly shaped by his work, which filled a major gap for me in my worldview about abiogenesis.