Word: proteins
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Pacemaker. Most biologists believe that the evolution of higher organisms works through genes-tiny little somethings (probably protein molecules) strung along the chromosomes in the germ plasm. Thousands of genes controlling various body characteristics have been traced in Drosophila melanogaster, the scientifically celebrated little fruit fly. It is by changes in these genes that evolution of different types of organisms takes place. But last week Dr. Millislav Demerec of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Genetics announced his opinion- based on careful research-that chromosomes contain one gene, which, by affecting all the genes, speeds up the rate...
...virgin rats to mother chicks and ratlets with great affection. This earned prolactin the nickname of "mother love" hormone. The implication of the discovery was that mother love, though doubtless fortified and colored in women by training and tradition has a physiological basis in a chemical substance-probably large protein molecules. (Dr. Riddle found that prolactin and other front-lobe hormones are disintegrated by trypsin, an enzyme which has the special property of "digesting" proteins...
Chemical Clue. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Richmond, Va., 28-year-old Dr. Charles Frederick Code told of his researches on histamine. For them he was awarded the Theobald Smith award of $1,000. Histamine is an organic chemical, a product of protein decomposition. Scientists have long known that histamine is especially concentrated in the cells of the lungs, liver and skin, but they did not know where it came from...
...recent years Dr. The Svedberg, a Swedish Nobelman, has done much research on giant protein molecules, determining their molecular weights after separating them in powerful centrifuges (whirling machines) of his own devising...
...Primary protein reactions," declared Dr. Svedberg, "are . . . elementary acts which must, of necessity, obey the laws of quantum mechanics." The implications of this statement are vastly more important to science than the actual splitting of blood pigment molecules. If the quantization of biological processes can be continued far enough, it will be possible to explain in exact mathematical terms-in terms of atomic energy levels and electronspins-what happens when insulin is secreted in the pancreas, when starch is broken down in the digestive system, when an ovum is penetrated and fertilized by a spermatozoon, many & many a complex biological...