Transformer The Deep Chemistry Of Life And Death

Author : Nick Lane
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393651495
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death written by Nick Lane and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the renowned biochemist and author of The Vital Question, an 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.”—Bill Gates 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. Lane reveals the beautiful, violent world within our cells, where hydrogen atoms are stripped from the carbon skeletons of food and fed to the ravenous beast of oxygen. Yet this same cycle, spinning in reverse, also created the chemical building blocks that enabled the emergence of life on our planet. Now it does both. How can the same pathway create and destroy? What might our study of the Krebs cycle teach us about the mysteries of aging and the hardest problem of all, consciousness? Transformer unites the story of our planet with the story of our cells—what makes us the way we are, and how it connects us to the origin of life. Enlivened by Lane’s talent for distilling and humanizing complex research, Transformer offers an essential read for anyone fascinated by biology’s great mysteries. Life is at root a chemical phenomenon: this is its deep logic.

Author : Nick Lane
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780198607830
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Oxygen written by Nick Lane and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxygen offers fresh perspectives on our own lives and deaths, explaining modern killer diseases, why we age, and what we can do about it. Advancing revelatory new ideas, following chains of evidence, the book ranges through many disciplines, from environmental sciences to molecular medicine. Damage to DNA caused by oxidative stress appears to explain aging and many of its diseases, hence the popularity in alternative health circles of antioxidants. But antioxidants alone fail to prevent aging. Lane suggests two different avenues of study: modulation of the immune system, which generates free radicals as part of its defense against infectious diseases; and ways of improving the health of our cellular mitochondria, on which many age-related ailments seem to depend. Provocative and complexly argued. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author : Nick Lane
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1847652220
Total Pages : 469 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Life Ascending written by Nick Lane and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2010 Royal Society Prize for science books Powerful new research methods are providing fresh and vivid insights into the makeup of life. Comparing gene sequences, examining the atomic structure of proteins and looking into the geochemistry of rocks have all helped to explain creation and evolution in more detail than ever before. Nick Lane uses the full extent of this new knowledge to describe the ten greatest inventions of life, based on their historical impact, role in living organisms today and relevance to current controversies. DNA, sex, sight and consciousnesses are just four examples. Lane also explains how these findings have come about, and the extent to which they can be relied upon. The result is a gripping and lucid account of the ingenuity of nature, and a book which is essential reading for anyone who has ever questioned the science behind the glories of everyday life.

Author : Peter M. Hoffmann
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0465022537
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Life's Ratchet written by Peter M. Hoffmann and published by . This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through the sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. People are essentially giant assemblies of interacting nanoscale machines.

Author : Nick Lane
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781781250372
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Vital Question written by Nick Lane and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A game-changing book on the origins of life, called the most important scientific discovery 'since the Copernican revolution' in The Observer.

Author : Dennis Bray
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300155441
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wetware written by Dennis Bray and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A beautifully written journey into the mechanics of the world of the cell, and even beyond, exploring the analogy with computers in a surprising way” (Denis Noble, author of Dance to the Tune of Life). How does a single-cell creature, such as an amoeba, lead such a sophisticated life? How does it hunt living prey, respond to lights, sounds, and smells, and display complex sequences of movements without the benefit of a nervous system? This book offers a startling and original answer. In clear, jargon-free language, Dennis Bray taps the findings from the discipline of systems biology to show that the internal chemistry of living cells is a form of computation. Cells are built out of molecular circuits that perform logical operations, as electronic devices do, but with unique properties. Bray argues that the computational juice of cells provides the basis for all distinctive properties of living systems: it allows organisms to embody in their internal structure an image of the world, and this accounts for their adaptability, responsiveness, and intelligence. In Wetware, Bray offers imaginative, wide-ranging, and perceptive critiques of robotics and complexity theory, as well as many entertaining and telling anecdotes. For the general reader, the practicing scientist, and all others with an interest in the nature of life, this book is an exciting portal to some of biology’s latest discoveries and ideas. “Drawing on the similarities between Pac-Man and an amoeba and efforts to model the human brain, this absorbing read shows that biologists and engineers have a lot to learn from working together.” —Discover magazine “Wetware will get the reader thinking.” —Science magazine

Author : Michael Levin
Publisher : Iph001
ISBN 13 : 9780750316750
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ahead of the Curve written by Michael Levin and published by Iph001. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular conception of science is of a steady, upward climb of progress. The reality is not that simple. Highly significant discoveries often stay unrecognized for decades, particularly if they conflict with the current paradigm or extend it in ways hard to imagine at the time. Ahead of the Curve: Hidden breakthroughs in the biosciences is a fascinating collection of lost research that the editors believe are important scientific contributions.

Author : Franklin M. Harold
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197604544
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book On Life written by Franklin M. Harold and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franklin M. Harold's On Life reveals what science can tell us about the living world. All creatures, from bacteria and redwoods to garden snails and humans, belong to a single biochemical family. We all operate by the same principles and are all made up of cells, either one or many. We flaunt capacities that far exceed those of inanimate matter, yet we stand squarely within the material world. So what is life, anyway? How do living things function, and how did they come into existence? Questions like these have baffled philosophers and scientists since antiquity, but over the past half-century answers have begun to emerge. Offering an inside look, Franklin M. Harold makes life accessible to readers interested in the biological big picture. The book traces how living things operate, focusing on the interplay of biology with physics and chemistry. He asserts that biology stands apart from the physical sciences because life revolves around organization-- that is, purposeful order. On Life aims to make life intelligible by giving readers an understanding of the biological landscape; it sketches the principles as biologists presently understand them and highlights major unresolved issues. What emerges is a biology bracketed by two stubborn mysteries: the nature of the mind and the origin of life. This portrait of biology is comprehensible but inescapably complex, internally consistent, and buttressed by a wealth of factual knowledge.

Author : Robert A Weinberg
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786724013
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book One Renegade Cell written by Robert A Weinberg and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cancer research has reached a major turning point. The quality and quantity of information gathered about this disease in the past twenty years has revolutionized our understanding of its origins and behavior. No one is better qualified to comment on these dramatic leaps forward than molecular biologist Robert A. Weinberg, director of one of the leading cancer research centers in the world. In One Renegade Cell , Weinberg presents an accessible and state-of-the-art account of how the disease begins and how, one day, it will be cured. Weinberg tells how the roots of cancer were uncovered in 1909 and when the first cancer-causing virus was discovered. He then moves forward to the discovery of the role of chemical carcinogens and radiation in triggering cancer, and relates the remarkable story of the discoveries of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, the master controllers of normal and malignant cell proliferation. This book, which presumes little prior knowledge of biology, describes the revolution in biomedical research that has finally uncovered the forces driving malignant growth. Drawing on insights that simply were not available until recently, the discoveries presented in One Renegade Cell have already begun to profoundly alter the way that we diagnose and treat human cancers.

Author : Franklin M. Harold
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022617431X
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In Search of Cell History written by Franklin M. Harold and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-29 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive history of cell evolution “deftly discusses the definition of life” as well as cellular organization, classification and more (San Francisco Book Review). The origin of cells remains one of the most fundamental mysteries in biology, one that has spawned a large body of research and debate over the past two decades. With In Search of Cell History, Franklin M. Harold offers a comprehensive, impartial take on that research and the controversies that keep the field in turmoil. Written in accessible language and complemented by a glossary for easy reference, this book examines the relationship between cells and genes; the central role of bioenergetics in the origin of life; the status of the universal tree of life with its three stems and viral outliers; and the controversies surrounding the last universal common ancestor. Harold also discusses the evolution of cellular organization, the origin of complex cells, and the incorporation of symbiotic organelles. In Search of Cell History shows us just how far we have come in understanding cell evolution—and the evolution of life in general—and how far we still have to go. “Wonderful…A loving distillation of connections within the incredible diversity of life in the biosphere, framing one of biology’s most important remaining questions: how did life begin?”—Nature