Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

a switch to glycolysis even in the presence of oxygen – the Warburg effect – which drives cell growth.

enabling the pumping of six rather than ten protons

The problem in all these disparate cases is how to balance the yin and yang of the Krebs cycle – how to offset the needs of energy generation against the synthesis of new organic molecules.

They grew from his early preoccupation with how bacteria keep their inside different from the outside.

was exactly why respiration is suppressed with age.

the electrical potential is too high (because ATP is not being consumed) then Krebs-cycle flux must slow or even reverse. That signals directly to the nucleus, through succinate and citrate, controlling the activity of thousands of genes, the epigenetic state of the cell.

It’s not really a cycle so much as a roundabout, where traffic enters and exits as well as going around.

Crosses between species do indeed cause ‘hybrid breakdown’, attributed to incompatibilities between mitochondrial and nuclear genes.

Ageing is not driven by mutations in genes accumulating over time, but by changes in gene activity – epigenetics.