Because of the author’s obvious enthusiasm, the writing is never dry, despite all the long words and formulas. Yet Transformer is being marketed to laypeople, so it’s appropriate to get a non-chemist’s take. I’ve given chemistry a wide berth ever since. If that’s as clear to your ears as a morning hello, have I got a book for you! Unfortunately, it’s not to me: The tour of the chem lab during my high-school orientation included an eyewash station to save your sight from an errant spray of acid and a furled blanket with which you could smother yourself in case you caught fire. “acteria capable of anoxygenic photosynthesis have a single photosystem, which is capable of either ATP synthesis (via a cyclic flow of electrons from chlorophyll back to chlorophyll, with the electrons energized by light) or CO2 fixation, by transferring electrons from a donor such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S) onto ferredoxin.” Here is a typical passage, taken from a page opened at random: My assertions are tentative because most of the book is unintelligible to me. He’s apparently offering a revolutionary theory on the origin of life and consciousness. This seems to be the gist of the argument biochemist Nick Lane makes in his dense Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death. It connects the origin of life with the devastation of cancer, the first photosynthetic bacteria with our own mitochondria, sulphurous sludges with the emergence of consciousness, and the trivial differences between ourselves with the large-scale history of our planet.Form follows function action precedes object.
To understand this cycle is to fathom the deep coherence of the living world. At its core is an amazing cycle of reactions that uses energy to transform inorganic molecules into the building blocks of life - and the reverse. In Transformer, Nick Lane turns the standard view upside down, capturing an extraordinary scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight.
A better question goes back to the formative years of biology: what processes animate cells and set them apart from lifeless matter? Yet there is no difference in information content 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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