What I would say about any of Nick Lane’s books is that they make a very complex subject easy to understand. The depth in understanding cellular biology and biochemistry is impressive, combining that actually explaining in a helpful way makes it an extremely beneficial resource.
I have been personally on this quest to understand chemistry at a higher level. I spent the better part of 2020-2021 diving into physics. Chemistry and I guess biology can be lumped into this, as the next logical step to diving into foundational science. The reason behind this is that it dawned on me how little I actually knew about foundational science and was going off general assumptions that may be wrong.
If you listened to our interview with Evan Piekon Energy System Development. He touched upon how the bioenergetic model as we know it was wrong. Essentially we do not follow this staged energy system utilization. We actually use all substrates at all times, specifically oxygen. How did Evan come to this conclusion, he has a background in chemistry.
Same with our interview with Rob Jacobs and metabolism. Rob touched on functions within the mitochondria that elicit increased electron utilization within the electron transport chain based on light spectrums the body is exposed to. The depth in which Rob is impressive, and intimidating to say the least. He brings such a level of knowledge, like Evan, that we can all feel insecure about our lack of knowledge.
To me Lane is a conduit to understanding cellular biology and chemistry within the cell. He makes the complex not only understandable but relatable. With Transformer he dives into how the Kreb Cycle, also known as the Citric Acid Cycle, produces electrons as a byproduct evolution. The way he came to this conclusion was looking at the Krebs cycle in reverse.
By reverse, Lane was referring to photosynthesis within plants. Essentially the product of creating ATP for animals, by products being CO2 and H2O, is the same in reverse for plants. For plants, H20 and CO2 enter the plant version of the Krebs cycle and produce O2 and glucose.
Why this is important is because the bidirectional steps on the Krebs cycle function as fail safes in a complex intracellular environment. The process of converting glucose into ATP through anaerobic or aerobic glycolysis has several steps that are contingent on the cellular environment. The presence of ATP, ADP, AMP, intermediates, or hydrogens all impact if a pyruvate enters the mitochondria or not.
The history, the story, the implications of the Krebs cycle makes this extremely fascinating. The delivery of something that can be very boring or technical and make it interesting was impressive. Lane’s writing is a testament to what a good author is. I applaud the going for a rather difficult topic and combine that with a grand hypothesis of how the Krebs cycle is the key to understanding all of health.