In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a lightning bolt. In unravelling these scientific enigmas and laking sense of life’s quirks, Lane’s explanation provides a solution to life's vital question: why are we as we are, indeed, why are we here at all?
At the core of biology is the famous Krebs cycle: the transformation of inorganic molecules into the building blocks of life, and back. Mapping these complex processes across the tree of life could be the key to understanding the functioning of the living world – the profound connections between the first bacteria and our own cells, and between the birth of consciousness and the inevitability of death.
Transformer charts the rise of the living world, and the deep logic of life as a chemical phenomenon.