Chemistry of life and death

Biology, Physics, Chemistry. 23/09/10

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This episode is with Nick Lane. Nick is a professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London. He is an author of several books like Power, Sex, Suicide; Life ascending and the Vital question. His latest book is Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death.

Here we talk about What is life?, Life as an information, importance of Krebs cycle, How did the life start?, consciousness, chronic diseases like cancer and process of ageing.

About the guest

  • 00:00:00 Introduction

  • 00:01:50 Is 'What is life?' a right question?

  • 00:05:10 Information view of life

  • 00:08:02 Importance of metabolism for origin of life

  • 00:14:27 Gases giving rise to life stuff

  • 00:24:06 Why life doesn't form in a cola bottle?

  • 00:25:20 Oxygen based life

  • 00:31:06 Eukaryogenesis

  • 00:41:07 Respiration in bacteria and mitochondria

  • 00:44:29 Electrical potential on membranes

  • 00:52:24 Membrane inheritance

  • 00:58:04 Krebs cycle and reverse Krebs cycle

  • 01:06:54 Recycling of mitochondria for health

  • 01:15:24 Answering important questions in science

  • 01:18:19 Biology of fields

  • 01:32:11 Reductionism in science

  • 01:35:33 How anesthetics affect bacterial or mitochondrial membranes?

  • 01:45:43 Quantum biology

  • 01:59:05 Lee Cronin's idea of synthetic life

  • 02:01:35 Lee Cronin and Sara Walker's assembly theory

  • 02:05:39 Can we simplify present biochemistry?

  • 02:17:53 Thank you!

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