Transformer review

Transformer is Nick Lane's investigation of the Krebs cycle — a metabolic pathway discovered in the 1930s that every living cell on Earth runs — and his argument that this cycle is not merely the engine of cellular energy but a chemical record of how life first emerged from inorganic chemistry. The title refers to the cycle's dual role: it both oxidizes food to generate energy and provides the carbon skeletons that the cell uses to build everything else. Lane argues that these two functions together make it uniquely central to biology.

Lane begins by laying out the cycle itself — with genuine care for readers who are not biochemists — and then pivots to the deeper question: why does every form of life we know use essentially the same set of core reactions? His answer draws on the hydrothermal vent theory of life's origin. He argues that the Krebs cycle running in reverse, in conditions that mimic alkaline hydrothermal vents, could produce organic molecules from CO2 and hydrogen without needing enzymes or genetic machinery. This reversal — the reductive TCA cycle — may have been the original chemistry of life, and forward-running metabolism evolved from it.