Lane provides a luminous understanding of how scientists, including Lane himself, are rethinking energy and living organisms. In this compulsively readable book, Lane takes us on a riveting journey, ranging from the flow of energy to new ways of understanding cancer. Life is at root a chemical phenomenon: this is its deep logic. And it puts the subtle differences between individuals in the same grand story as the rise of the living world itself. It links the emergence of consciousness with the inevitability of death. It connects the first photosynthetic bacteria with our own peculiar cells. To grasp the Krebs cycle is to fathom the deep coherence of biology. Nick Lane is in the vanguard of scientists now tracing its ramifications across the tree of life. This conflicted merry-go-round of energy and matter has long taunted true understanding. At its core is a cycle of reactions that transforms inorganic molecules into the building blocks of life, and the reverse – the iconic Krebs cycle that sits at the heart of metabolism. In Transformer, Nick Lane captures a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight.

The answer could turn our picture of life on Earth upside down. What really animates cells and sets them apart from non-living matter? This question goes back to the flawed geniuses and heroic origins of modern biology. Yet in terms of information there is no difference between a living cell and one that died a moment ago. ‘One of my favourite science writers’ Bill Gatesįor decades, biology has been dominated by information – the power of genes.

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