Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

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This is a dense book. I read two others by Lane that discuss cellular respiration and its variants. Both cover many of the same points and were challenging but far more accessible. In particular, reading The Vital Question before reading this one was very helpful to me. I recommend it highly for those of us who prefer following fewer chains of chemical reactions and more text aimed at the non-biochemist. My review of The Vital Question covers much of what is in this book, so I will just write some brief notes here. 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. 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. What does Lane say is the best thing we can do to have long healthy lives? You’d never guess. Eat a modest quantity of healthy food and stay active. 🙂 But be aware, there’s a large element of chance in health. A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

After reading this book, one will understand how this cycle of matter (eponymously named in the 1930s after Sir Hans Adolf Krebs) is a sound explanation for the origin of life, lifespan, and the end of life. You will learn how the whole beautiful process can be understood in terms of physical chemistry, which is a unique sweet spot in the massive space of possible scientific explanations. It is a remarkable story. Although I love this book, it does inevitably suffer part way through from the problems of a biology book being read by non-biologists. To start with I was carried along with enthusiasm engendered by those stories and Lane's novel presentation, but there are a couple of chapters midway through where the sheer volume of molecules named becomes somewhat overwhelming and I had to fight myself not to skip to a more interesting bit. It's hard to see how this could be avoided - but it does remain an issue. It’s not possible to construct a plausible story by starting with a computer chip. Energy drives everything and life began at an energy gradient.The reverse Krebs cycle was more widespread on the early Earth before the rise of oxygen. Photosynthesis evolved in the cyanobacteria long after ancient bacteria were converting CO2 and H2 into organic molecules to drive growth. 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

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. 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? Mitochondrial genes tend to evolve much ten to fifty times faster than nuclear genes, as they are copied far more than nuclear genes, and so they accumulate more mutations. A clean-up process in early life sieves out the most detrimental mutations. That’s why mitochondrial diseases directly affect only about 1 in 5,000 of us. 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 ag The greatest risk factor for cancer is older age: cancer incidence increases exponentially with age. One might think this is explained by the steady accumulation of mutations with age. But the buildup of mutations with age seems to be too slow to explain either cancer or ageing as a process. Nor can it explain why humans do not have a higher cancer rate than, mice, despite having ten times as many rounds of DNA copying to make an individual.Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected Hugely important ... a powerfully persuasive case for life being about energy flow, flux and change. In Transformer, chemistry is quite literally brought to life’

Thrilling and highly persuasive … This hugely important book is set to become a landmark, transforming our understanding of how life works’ 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. As we get older, our respiratory performance declines slowly. The rate of respiration is depressed the most at complex I, the largest and most complex of the respiratory complexes. Complex I is the main source of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from mitochondria, and the rate at which these escape (ROS flux) tends to creep up with age. Also, complex 1 is the only entry point for NADH. So the decline in complex I activity with age means that it’s no longer so easy to oxidise NADH. Plants make use of rubisco for photosynthesis. Rubisco is inefficient and is as likely to fix CO2 as O2. CO2 levels were high when the molecule evolved, but even today the buildup of CO2 within the leaf causes crops to lose as much as one quarter of their yield. Amazingly, rubisco now turns out to be widespread in ancient bacteria, doing a totally different job: degrading sugars derived from the RNA of other cells, to support growth fueled by eating other cells.

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Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) are such vital physiological signals that cells go out of their way to keep ROS flux within tight physiological limits. Redox tone – the balance of electron sources and sinks in a cell – is as critical to homeostasis (our normal chemical balance) as temperature or acidity. Any damage to the respiratory chain will tend to increase ROS flux.

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. 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. Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. Moving electrical charges generate an electromagnetic field, and it may be that the fluctuating electrical patterns of the EEG, or electroencephalogram, reflect the activity of the membranes involved in respiration. An electromagnetic field can entrain water, and all the molecules within a cell, into a state of sympathetic oscillations. Might that resonance state feel like something? His second book, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (OUP, 2005) is an exploration of the extraordinary effects that mitochondria have had on the evolution of complex life. It was selected as one of The Economist's Books of the Year for 2005, and shortlisted for the 2006 Royal Society Aventis Science Book Prize and the Times Higher Young Academic Author of the Year Award.of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally 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. Transformeris 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. I thought the best part of the book was how the author detailed the scientists’ quest to discover those elusive secrets. I also quite enjoyed the appendix and source material that he used. Rather than just a list of articles and books, the author took the time to review most of the research material in detail, giving the reader many starting points should they wish to further investigate the subject on their own. To grasp the Krebs cycle is to fathom the deep coherence of biology. It connects the first photosynthetic bacteria with our 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.