52 Can Science Explain Life? 



ysis, yet they all have their sulphur in chemical 

 combination with the beta carbon atoms of the 

 alpha amino acids and appear to be merely differ- 

 ent cleavage products of the same original struc- 

 tures. The principal sulphur-containing cleavage 

 product is cystine, which contains a pair of sul- 

 phur atoms between two alpha amino acid groups. 

 If we assume that all alpha amino acid groups 

 were derived from spirazines, then we shall have 

 to conclude that sulphur sometimes takes the 

 place of the gamma carbon atoms in the connec- 

 tions between adjacent spirazines. 



If we assume a sulphur content of 2.5 percent, 

 which is more than most proteins contain, then 

 there would be about one cystine molecule or two 

 sulphur atoms for every eighteen spirazines as 

 seen in transverse section. 



It appears from the foregoing that living mat- 

 ter consists largely of a duplication of the same 

 or similar chemical structures, and that the unit 

 of structure cannot be much larger than one of the 

 triple junctions shown in Fig. 2, or one of the 

 spirazine triplets shown in Fig. 5. These various 

 units must be quite independent of one another in 

 their chemical behavior because they are com- 

 pletely separated from one another by the inter- 

 mediate spirazines, and since all spirazines are 



