Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

Absolutely fascinating subject! If you ever wondered HOW plants make energy out of sunlight and air, and build themselves carbon houses with it, this is the book for you. I picked up this book without ever having heard of the Krebs cycle or the reverse Krebs cycle or the scientists who worked out the chemistry. Well, now I have. Lane does more than just explain the chemistry. He puts a face on it. He doesn't only tell us what these scientists discovered, he tells us about the experiments, the successful ones and the ones that failed, the decades of slogging into blind alleys, the accidents of history, the personal lives of the scientists who worked out the intricate chemistry that has given us this world of life that we know today. I'm really enjoying this book.

Lane makes every topic readable and information-packed. Most people who have taken the dreaded biochemistry course haven't learned half as much about the Krebs Cycle as is in this book, and most of them dreaded the course partly because they found it so hard to learn. But of course you wouldn't just look at a car and how some of the parts (wheels, belts) go around that it uses fuel. you would look at how the parts relate to each other and what each one does. That is what Lane does for the Krebs Cycle. Lane takes the cycle in small steps shows what each one does and how it is essential to the life that runs on oxygen, and by running in reverse, makes oxygen by breaking off from other chemicals. He shows how it can be adapted by its chemical environment to produce other necessary chemicals along the way. His stories of discovery are partly from his own research of deep-sea life. The Krebs cycle is independent of life (I hadn't known this) but can just chug along producing components that can be used by living things as they emerge and become capable of reproducing. Every book I have read by Lane has been fascinating. I started with Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life and they were all great.

Not knowing much about biochemistry, "Transformer" was a informative book, although the detailed explanations were more than I could follow, and not necessary to grasp the main points. Lane's thesis that making the stuff of life (biosynthesis) and using energy is fundamental to information (genetics) makes intuitive good sense. His application of this basic theme to how life goes about its business, how life originated, ageing, and cancer enlarged my appreciation for what it means to be alive. Well worth reading, and rereading for the major ideas.

For anyone, who has "suffered" through memorizing the Krebs/citric acid cycle as presented in biochemistry, this is the rest of the story. For the conventional dogma is so narrow and incomplete that in maybe only a few exceptional courses, does one get an idea of just how much more there is and how that fits in with the whole picture of metabolism. Well, this book helps to bring one along to see just how marvelous and intricate all of this is, whether the cycle runs forward as taught or (gasp) backward, when there is but a slight change in conditions. You learn all sorts of connecting and informative information about the greater scheme of things as the story unfolds. Lane gives the reader plenty of perspectives as to the history and personalities of those who were pioneers in developing and sorting out this most basic of cellular chemistry. The book is not overly technical, but it helps if the reader already has some idea of the cycle, even if it was studied a long time ago, for he will bring you up to date and take you way, way beyond as you progress through the various chapters on how life may have begun, what life is, issues around aging (not what you might first think), a metabolic view of cancer, the interplay between metabolic energy and gene expression, dissonance between mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, and even how this basic biochemistry and the electric fields associated with charge imbalance across membranes may be at the root of thought and self awareness itself.

Good ideas. Would have preferred strait forward chemical notations and less “history” still, important ideas and worth reading, no doubt

The book is written masterfully by a brilliant scientist. It provides a fresh look on the question of the origin of life and gives the history behind the advances made so far. It is definitely a must read for anyone who is interested in understanding bioenergetics and how the life might have emerged!

I almost didn't buy this book. Something about the Krebs cycle and hydrothermal vents. But then I saw the author was Nick Lane and I didn't need to read the reviews, since I've read all of his books. You can gage the value I place on a book by how much I've highlighted with my trusty yellow highlighter. Lane's books use an entire highlighter. Like Yogi Berra said, focus on everything. When I took biology and chemistry in high school back in the 50's, no mention was made of the Krebs cycle or hydrothermal vents. Of course my high school textbooks were printed right after the Gutenberg bible. DNA was a recent discovery. A few years before that they had just discovered dirt. Under alkaline hydrothermal conditions hydrogen can react with CO2 to form organic molecules. I already knew that because I read The Vital Question Lane wrote a few years back. (I highlighted it). But I didn't know why til I read Transformer. It's very difficult to get hydrogen to react with CO2 in the lab because hydrogen is not very reactive and poorly soluble. But under the enormous pressure of sea water a couple of miles deep, the hydrogen gas pouring out of sea floor vents dissolves under the pressure and becomes more reactive. I found the sections on the biochemistry of senescence and death of particular interest since I have already exceeded my actuarial life expectancy. Academically interesting, but he provides no solution. Oh well. At least he presents a roadmap to understand the biochemical progression I can track as I circle the drain.

I absolutely recommend this book for anyone interested in the origins of life on our planet. It is full of fascinating stories of discovery (Krebs, Calvin, etc) and the personalities involved - and the impact these remarkable people have had on our understanding of metabolism, energy flow, and photosynthesis. Lane is both very well-informed about what came before him and offers great insights from his own research into the underpinnings and likely origins of life which I found both very engaging and ultimately convincing, although he readily admits there are many questions remaining. A reader without a scientific background will find this book difficult to penetrate although he does simplify the (bio)chemistry considerably in his schemes - undergraduate level of biology and chemistry will help a lot. What an amazing (and developing) story this is - I loved it and am buying for several friends.

Profundo y Claro. Brutalmente Directo, como suele ser Nick Lane. Aquellos que gustan de los temas de bioquímica ,actual y evolucionista, Nick Lane ofrece narraciones sensacionales y bien documentadas.

I hoped to like this book: I'm interested in it's (eventual) thesis that the mechanisms of respiration recapitulate the conditions under which multi-cellular life arose. I'm also intrigued by his argument that a better understanding of biological structures and energy flows will contribute more to an understanding of life, ageing and disease than further refinements of the (now) dominant genetic/information-theory approach. But I've been dissuaded by the first chapter (!) of this book from continuing. I'm not a bioscientist (or chemist) but I have some understanding of the main outlines of respiration and the role of mitochondria. I am glad to report that Lane is enthusiastic about his subject and not afraid to discuss difficult biochemistry with the general reader. But he does a poor job of explaining the myriad details he thinks important about the basic chemistry of the Krebs cycle that lies at the heart of his thesis. His approach (in the first chapter) is to trace the historical development of today's understanding of the complex chemistry and physics involved in the transformation of food (sugars) to energy that form one half of the Krebs function. Unfortunately this historical approach means mixing up some abbreviated descriptions of the chemistry as it is now understood with the errors and misdirections taken by the key researchers as the figured out what was going on over the past century. It's all very well to indulge praise of his heroes, but Lane seems to forget that he has to take a few "clod-hoppers" along with him on the journey. They (we) are becoming more puzzled, not more illuminated, by the stops and starts and sudden bursts of discovery his account contains and we’re stumbling over the knotty strings of chemical transformations (and “magic roundabouts”) that comprise his account of the Krebs cycle. Near the end of the first Chapter, Lane comes at last to the crucial question of the synthesis of ATP downstream from the Krebs cycle. This is the key energy 'bundle' made by the mitochondrion that powers the rest of the organism. But Lane compresses his explanation of the physics of 'bundling' bio-energy into a brief diagram (with arrows and ion valences) and its incomprehensible caption about quantum tunnelling, turbine 'motors' and 'proton-motive forces'. I lost all hope, at this point, that Lane would somehow clarify the the chemical soup of succinates, pyruvates, carboxylic acid and acetates that he kept sloshing around. I gave up.

So much to learn. Clearly presented insights into origin of life.

Life is amazing and this is a really good introduction to how it works at the most basal level.

One of the most clear and best biology writers of our time.