Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

Biochemist Lane (The Vital Question) digs into the “merry-go-round of energy and matter known as the Krebs cycle” in this dense and demanding outing. “For decades, biology has been dominated by information—the power of genes,” Lane writes, and aims to shift the focus instead to energy, which he writes “conjures... genes themselves into existence and still determines their activity, even in our information-soaked lives.” To that end, he devotes chapters to topics related to the process involved in cellular respiration known as the Krebs cycle, discussing how spontaneous chemical reactions in the heat and pressure of undersea vents could have generated the basic building blocks of life in Earth’s early days; how the Krebs cycle is involved in cancer; what the cycle can reveal about ageing; and proposing that energy “has to correspond in some way to the stream of consciousness.” Unfortunately, he assumes readers will come equipped with a background in chemistry, suggesting at one point, for example, that “you can probably see where I’m going with this” before concluding that “when forwards flux through the Krebs cycle is impaired, cancer cells can make citrate by converting a-ketoglutarate into isocitrate, then citrate, through reverse flux.” General readers can give this one a pass. (July)