🎉Today, 7/12, “TRANSFORMER: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death” is out from @w.w.norton . The brilliant biochemist and award-winning author Nick Lane’s illuminating inquiry into the Krebs cycle and the origins of life. “Nick Lane’s exploration of the building blocks that underlie life’s big fundamental questions―the origin of life itself, aging, and disease―have shaped my thinking since I first came across his work. He is one of my favorite science writers.”― @thisisbillgates What brings the Earth to life, and our own lives to an end? For decades, biology has been dominated by the study of genetic information. Information is important, but it is only part of what makes us alive. Our inheritance also includes our living metabolic network, a flame passed from generation to generation, right back to the origin of life. In Transformer, biochemist Nick Lane reveals a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight ―how the same simple chemistry gives rise to life and causes our demise. Lane is among the vanguard of researchers asking why the Krebs cycle, the “perfect circle” at the heart of metabolism, remains so elusive more than eighty years after its discovery. Transformer is Lane’s voyage, as a biochemist, to find the inner meaning of the Krebs cycle―and its reverse―why it is still spinning at the heart of life and death today. "One of the most creative of today's biologists ... this is a book filled with big ideas, many of which are bold instances of lateral thinking. " ― Michael Marshall, New Scientist "In this compulsively readable book, Lane takes us on a riveting journey, ranging from the flow of energy to new ways of understanding cancer." ― Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies "I loved every page of Nick Lane’s new book." ― Lee Smolin, author of Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution “ ‘Most of the individual steps I’m going to show here,” writes the author, ‘are not *real*’ as the whole series occurs virtually instantaneously in a sort of soft-shoe shuffle.’ A first-rate writer, Lane explains these concepts with a minimum of jargon” - Kirkus Reviews 👍🙌🧬🫀🧫📕 #krebscycle #popscisummerreading #evolutionarybiology