Word: nucleic
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...real origin of this concern was the discovery in 1953 at Cambridge University by Watson and Dr. Francis Crick that the pattern of all life forms is determined by a double-helical molecule of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Since then other investigators have found ways of cutting a long nucleic-acid molecule, by chemical means, into shorter pieces that can then be recombined...
...intimate association between even the most dissimilar organisms. For example, he points out that bacteria called rhizobia live in the roots of bean plants and enable them to utilize the nitrogen in the soil; without these parasites the plants would die. There are also viruses-small, independent packets of nucleic acids -which Thomas believes may have helped man evolve by transmitting bits of the master molecule DNA from one organism to another. Even the single cells that have combined to form a human being house microscopic non-human tenants whose value to the health of the cell appears unquestioned...
...There is new evidence that the main cancer villains are viruses, submicroscopic packets of nucleic acids that can invade cells and take over their genetic machinery. Using immunological techniques to identify antigens (the substances that trigger the body's defenses), Dr. Donald Morton of the University of California at Los Angeles has found signs of viral activity in human sarcomas, or cancers of connective tissue. Drs. Werner and Gertrude Henle of the University of Pennsylvania have studied an intruder known as the Epstein-Barr virus in cells from victims of Burkitt's lymphoma, a tumor of the lymph...
Having dispatched with the nucleic acids, showing how they could originate and function by random events. Monod moves to the question of cellular proteins. The processes of life within a cell--metabolism--are carried out primarily by proteins: enzymatic proteins, regulatory proteins, structural proteins. Monod carefully constructs for the reader the essence of enzyme functions and mechanisms as they are presently known and builds from this a model for complex, intricate interactions (as they must be inside the cell) which originated and shaped themselves by chance...
Monod also points out that, knowing what we do about nucleic acids, it is easy to explain the transmission of genetic information from one generation to the next. Thus there is a biochemical necessity for a specific function to take place in the organism and in his descendants once this function has been coded (randomly, it seems) in the paternal...