198 | Nick Lane on Powering Biology

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2022

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Whether it's a team reinventing the electric motorbike,
0:03.0	the sound of what this place is looks like it should be in front.
0:05.6	Or a company making a vest that allows you to feel the virtual world.
0:09.8	Right now we have wind, now it's hailing.
0:13.8	Uh-oh, now it looks like it's going to be fireballs.
0:16.8	The third angle podcast introduces you to the brilliant minds
0:20.0	behind some of the world's most unique feats of engineering.
0:23.6	I'm your host Paul Hames from PTC.
0:26.0	The third angle is out now on your favorite podcast app.
0:30.4	Hello everyone, welcome to the Mindscape podcast.
0:32.4	I'm your host Sean Carroll.
0:34.0	When I wrote the big picture that book that I wrote a few years ago,
0:37.0	one of the most fun parts of the process to me was tracing
0:41.8	what happens to energy that we get from the sun through the atmosphere
0:46.3	of the Earth and then into life here on Earth.
0:49.3	You know, I always ask people when I give talks,
0:51.3	what good is the sun to us here on Earth with the idea
0:54.6	that probably they're thinking we get energy from the sun,
0:58.4	which is true.
0:59.4	But what is most important about the energy is that it is in a low entropy form.
1:03.9	It is useful energy so that low entropy energy we get from the sun
1:08.1	is captured by plants or unicellular organisms.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sean Carroll | Wondery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Sean Carroll | Wondery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.