A Good Science Read: Metabolism

Professor Tim Coulsen and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'Burn: the Misunderstood Science of Metabolism' by Herman Pontzer and 'Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death' by Nick Lane. Both these books are concerned with science of metabolism – the process by which food is burnt to produce energy – but they approach it from different perspectives. Burn is an engaging account of Herman Pontzer’s studies of human metabolism in different populations. He discusses the ways in which metabolism controls every aspect of our health, why exercise doesn’t increase result in weight loss, and why the only way to lose weight is to reduce your calorie intake. Transformer asks how did life originate? What is it that animates our cells, what are the metabolic reactions that power our cells, and how are they regulated?. At the heart of metabolism is a series of reactions known as the Krebs cycle and Nick Lane offers radical new insights into how this originated and evolved. Tim Coulsen is Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His research considers how ecosystems change in response to changes in the number of the top predator species. He has also recently published a popular science book The Universal History of Us. Websites: https://www.biology.ox.ac.uk/people/tim-coulson https://nick-lane.net/ https://globalhealth.duke.edu/people/pontzer-herman