Nick Lane

[M]etabolic flux... Even a simple bacterial cell can undergo... a billion trnasformations per second... is... what being alive is.

The driving force of is thermodynamics. ...[I]n this context ...the chemical need to react (to dissipate energy) in the same way that water needs to flow downhill.

The double helix of DNA... is composed of two long chains [of 'letters'] that snake around each other... each strand providing an exact template for the other. ...[E]ach strand ...contains just four types of letter, with ...billions ...arranged down... the chain. ...3,000 million letters ...make up the human genome ...[T]he same — the same lines of code — can have different effects depending on the context.

became the study of how... simple molecules were interconnected one into another. ...The [simple] molecules ...containing ...up to about twenty carbons, but most ...have fewer than ten.

If the Krebs cycle is ordained by thermodynamics, then it should take place spontaneously in some suitably propitious envirnonment, even in the absence of s.

The inner logic of ... Much of it is imposed by thermodynamics; some is facilitated by catalysts. Some is refined by genes. And part stems from the vicissitudes of life itself, which forced evolution down improbable paths, while transforming our geologically restless globe from a sterile, anoxic planet into the living, high-octane world of today.

The is riddled with redundancy.

It is the movement that creates the form.

Flux is a form of flow, but with one crucial difference. ...In biochemistry flux is the flow of things that are transformed along the way.

[B]iochemical pathways that produce the basic building blocks of life are... conserved across practically all cells.

This book will explore how the flow of energy and matter structures the evolution of life and even genetic information.

For decades, biology has been dominated by information—the power of genes. ...[Y]et there is no difference in the information content of a living protozoon and one that died ...The difference between alive and dead lies in energy flow ...the ability of cells to continually regenerate themselves from simpler building blocks.