Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

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the Krebs cycle is really, really old. Not quite as old as life, but as old as oxygen in the atmosphere, at least. Although I love this book, it does inevitably suffer part way through from the problems of a biology book being read by non-biolog Lane seems firmly established in the scientific establishment — he’s a professor at University College London — but his book carries a whiff of the heretic. He’s glad that “the simplistic notion that genes control metabolism is beginning to unravel” but frustrated that “the idea that mutations cause cancer remains the dominant paradigm”— a paradigm that, to his mind, is “too close to dogma.” He also states plainly: “I want to turn the standard view upside down.”

Mitochondrial DNA inherited from the mother. The idea of mother's curse is that as male and female metabolisms differ, some mitochondrial mutations could be neutral for the female but bad for the male. Genes in the nucleus can evolve to fix problems with mitochondrial DNA in males. Crosses between species can cause ‘hybrid breakdown’, attributed to incompatibilities between mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Lane’s foundation for his function-before-form theory seems to be that that cellular process — what’s known as the Krebs cycle — can run in both directions, meaning the cells of some animals are capable of building up materials, not just breaking them down. This somehow leads to the conclusion that these cells had metabolism before they contained genetic information.

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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.

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 explains cellular processes for producing energy particularly cellular respiration in animals. He recounts the history of key discoveries that underlie our understanding of cellular respiration and profiles the scientists involved. He compares cellular respiration with photosynthesis in plants and variants of these processes in microbes, pointing out the similarities and differences. He shows how early forms of the same processes could have initiated life detailing a specific scenario in hydrothermal vents. Lane explores how cellular respiration impacts health and aging. He makes the case that increasing dysfunction in cellular respiration is a primary factor in the increased rate of cancer and Alzheimer’s as we age and in aging itself.

H2 will push its electrons onto the catalyst in alkaline conditions, but CO2 will only accept them from the catalyst in acidic conditions. Virtually all cells pump H+ out, making the outside about three pH units more acidic than the inside. 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. 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.

The great immunologist Peter Medawar said we age because we outlive our allotted time as determined by the statistical laws of selection. This textbook view sees ageing and the diseases of old age as little more than the unmasking of late-acting genes, whose effects do us in.The chances of life starting on an oxygenated planet are arguably close to zero: hydrogen must react with CO2 to form organic molecules, but does so very reluctantly if at all in the presence of oxygen Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.