What Is Life Really Doing?

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There's been a big increase in the last few years in the chemistry of c o two and hydrogen. This has made it more respect again to think about, well how can we make them react? In my view at least, well, life is not chemistry in a bucket. It's in a cell. And what's happening in the cell? Well, its the difference the inside and the outside of the cell. The answer is they're producing a charge on that membrane, an electrical charge. As if you shrink yourself down to the size of a molecule, it's equivalent to a bolt of lightning. But really, all that membrane tell as you've got some irons on this side

The origin of life here on Earth was an important and fascinating event, but it was also a long time ago and hasn’t left many pieces of direct evidence concerning what actually happened. One set of clues we have comes from processes in current living organisms, especially those processes that seem extremely common. The Krebs cycle, the sequence of reactions that functions as a pathway for energy distribution in aerobic organisms, is such an example. I talk with biochemist about the importance of the Krebs cycle to contemporary biology, as well as its possible significance in understanding the origin of life.

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Nick Lane received his PhD from the Royal Free Hospital Medical School. He is currently a professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origin and Evolution. He was awarded the 2009 UCL Provost’s Venture Research Prize, the 2011 BMC Research Award for Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution, the 2015 Biochemical Society Award, and the 2016 Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture. His new book is Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death.

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