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The Engine That Built Life. Nick Lane - #541
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥
Nick Lane joins Brian Keating to argue that life is not information running on chemistry but energy in motion—showing how a single ancient metabolic “transformer” predates genes, powers mitochondria, shapes aging and cancer, constrains alien life, and reveals why today’s AI excitement echoes a solution biology discovered billions of years ago.
00:00 — Defining life vs. death; membrane potential as the boundary between living and dead
00:50 — The title “Transformer” and parallels between AI transformers and biochemical transformation
03:22 — Schrödinger’s What Is Life? and why defining life is intrinsically slippery
06:25 — Why the Krebs cycle sits at the center of metabolism
08:45 — The reverse Krebs cycle, CO₂ fixation, and links to cancer metabolism
11:35 — Mitochondrial membrane potential and the electrical field that powers life
15:00 — Reverse Krebs cycle vs. Calvin cycle and the evolution of carbon fixation
18:00 — Endosymbiosis: origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts
30:02 — Metabolism before genes; CO₂ + hydrogen and prebiotic chemistry
59:49 — Rapid-fire Q&A: RNA world critique and big open questions in origin-of-life research
------------------------------------------------------
➡️ Follow Nick Lane
🌐 Website: https://www.nick-lane.net
📚 Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death: https://nick-lane.net/books/transformer-the-deep-chemistry-of-life-and-death/
Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
📚 Get my books:
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Follow me to ask questions of my guests:
🏄♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list
✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog
🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
View all episodes
By Big Bang Productions Inc.
4.7
10471,047 ratings
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥
Nick Lane joins Brian Keating to argue that life is not information running on chemistry but energy in motion—showing how a single ancient metabolic “transformer” predates genes, powers mitochondria, shapes aging and cancer, constrains alien life, and reveals why today’s AI excitement echoes a solution biology discovered billions of years ago.
00:00 — Defining life vs. death; membrane potential as the boundary between living and dead
00:50 — The title “Transformer” and parallels between AI transformers and biochemical transformation
03:22 — Schrödinger’s What Is Life? and why defining life is intrinsically slippery
06:25 — Why the Krebs cycle sits at the center of metabolism
08:45 — The reverse Krebs cycle, CO₂ fixation, and links to cancer metabolism
11:35 — Mitochondrial membrane potential and the electrical field that powers life
15:00 — Reverse Krebs cycle vs. Calvin cycle and the evolution of carbon fixation
18:00 — Endosymbiosis: origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts
30:02 — Metabolism before genes; CO₂ + hydrogen and prebiotic chemistry
59:49 — Rapid-fire Q&A: RNA world critique and big open questions in origin-of-life research
------------------------------------------------------
➡️ Follow Nick Lane
🌐 Website: https://www.nick-lane.net
📚 Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death: https://nick-lane.net/books/transformer-the-deep-chemistry-of-life-and-death/
Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
📚 Get my books:
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Follow me to ask questions of my guests:
🏄♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list
✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog
🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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