Until now, biology has tended to study the materials that make up the instruments. The time has come to close our eyes and listen to the music.” November 2009). "Biodiversity: On the origin of bar codes". Nature. 462 (7271): 272–274. doi: 10.1038/462272a. PMID 19924185. 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. Oxygenic photosynthesis first arose in cyanobacteria or their predecessors, but exactly when remains uncertain. The first unequivocal evidence is the Great Oxidation Event (familiarly called the ‘GOE’) around 2.3 billion years ago, when the planet turned rusty red and froze.

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.Wachtershauser, G. (1 January 1990). "Evolution of the first metabolic cycles". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 87 (1): 200–204. Bibcode: 1990PNAS...87..200W. doi: 10.1073/pnas.87.1.200. PMC 53229. PMID 2296579. While mutations may cause cancer, particularly in young people, most mutations found in people with cancer arise once the process is underway. The major problem is the decline in respiration efficiency with age; damage may be “caused by protein unfolding or cross-linking, oxidation by ROS or glycation (the tendency of sugars such as glucose to react with proteins and lipids).” ROS stands for reactive oxygen species, free radicals. The ROS signals the cell to slow down respiration to control the ROS. The Krebs cycle intermediate succinate accumulates causing epigenetic changes (so gene activity follows faulty metabolism rather than causing it) and the Krebs cycle sometimes flows in reverse, creating biosynthesis (this was the original direction of the Krebs cycle). The cellular environment now “shouts grow”. Ageing itself raises our risk, by switching metabolism towards aerobic glycolysis, promoting cellular growth. The combination of a cancer spawning event "set in a permissive metabolic context" allows proliferation and active cancer. Transformer is no less ambitious. Its focus is a biochemical process called the Krebs cycle: a whirlwind of chemistry that spins around in all our cells many times a second. It is named for biochemist Hans Krebs, who described many details of how it works. Over time damage occurs to molecular machinery such as proteins. Repairing or replacing them is one of the most energy-sapping tasks that cells face. Eventually the respiratory machinery itself is damaged, and ROS flux creeps up. Cells do what they must and compensate by suppressing respiration a little. NADH is oxidized less effectively and the Krebs cycle loses forward momentum. Intermediates such as succinate start to accumulate and seep out from the mitochondria. They activate proteins such as HIF1α, which in turn alter the behavior of thousands of genes, pushing cells into a senescent state or to their demise.

Research into how the need for energy has influenced and constrained the evolution of life has always been a central theme of Lane’s career as both a scientist — with more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals to his credit — and a science writer. Lane received the 2015 Biochemical Society Award for his contributions to the life sciences, and in 2016 the Royal Society of London presented him with its Michael Faraday Prize for excellence in communicating science to the public.

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.