Revolution by Natural Selection – with Professor Nick Lane
Event Description
public in-person lecture
A radical history of life from inside our cells.
Nick Lane (PhD, FRSB, FLS) - Biochemist and writer; Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry, Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London.
In this talk, Professor Nick Lane outlined how a simple cycle at the heart of metabolism - the Krebs cycle - drove some of the most important revolutions in the history of life. By turning gases into organic molecules and back again, this deep chemistry links the origin of life with photosynthesis, the abrupt appearance of animals, cancer, and even the emergence of consciousness.
Professor Lane’s research is on the way that energy flow has shaped evolution over 4 billion years, using a mixture of theoretical and experimental work to address the origin of life, the evolution of complex cells and downright peculiar behaviour such as sex. 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 (CLOE). 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 for his outstanding contribution to molecular life sciences and 2016 Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science.
Nick Lane is the author of five acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, which have sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide, and been translated into 25 languages.
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