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In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowTransformer
The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
Narrator
Richard Trinder
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Length
10 hours 54 minutes
Language
English
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—why it is still spinning at the heart of life and death today.
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 is a must-listen for anyone fascinated by biology's great mysteries. Life is at root a chemical phenomenon: this is its deep logic.
Nick Lane is a British biochemist and writer. He was awarded the first Provost's Venture Research Prize in the Department of Genetics, Evolution, and Environment at University College London, where he is now Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry. Professor Lane's research deals with evolutionary biochemistry and bioenergetics, focusing on the origin of life and the evolution of complex cells. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is leading the UCL Research Frontiers Origins of Life program. He was awarded the 2011 BMC Research Award for Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution, and the 2015 Biochemical Society Award for his sustained and diverse contribution to the molecular life sciences and the public understanding of science. His books include Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World.
An experienced and award-winning actor, narrator, and singer with a degree in German literature, Richard Trinder trained at London's prestigious Poor School and has worked on stage, screen, and behind the microphone for nearly thirty years. His theater work has ranged from classical leading roles to pantomime dame, and most things in-between. On screen he has been a Harry Potter movie villain, fought alongside Doctor Who, smoldered as various soap-opera love interests, and appeared in over fifty TV commercials. He was the leading man in London's West End production of Mamma Mia! the musical for nine years. With an authoritative, fluent, and expressive style, his audiobook credits include AudioFile Earphones Award-winning history, Costa Prize literary fiction, romance, biography, and sci-fi for many major publishing houses.