Understanding the Krebs Cycle: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

Generations of students have learned how the Krebs cycle generates the building blocks of life and fuels the furnace of respiration. Biochemist Nick Lane is among the vanguard of researchers who ask how this complex, contradictory pathway of creation, destruction, and renewal within our cells could help us understand questions from the origins of life to the devastation of cancer.

In an illustrated presentation, Lane guides an exploration through the “conflicted merry-go-round of energy and matter” that is the Krebs cycle. Along the way, he recounts the scientific detective work that discovered this process while deconstructing textbook views about metabolism.

He traces the primacy of the Krebs cycle—and its reverse—from deep sea hydrothermal vents and the “Cambrian Explosion” to the individual, yet universal, experience of aging. By distilling and humanizing complex research, Lane offers an essential overview for anyone fascinated by biology’s great mysteries.

Lane is professor of evolutionary biochemistry at University College London, co-director of UCL’s Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution, and an award-winning author of five books.

His book, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death (W. W. Norton), is available for purchase.

Book Sale Information

• Purchase your copy of Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death by Nick Lane here.
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