THE MOST PRIMITIVE FORMS OF LIFE 



element enters. This is the breaking up of the entire 

 molecule into self-sufficient components after a certain 

 amount of growth has taken place. This process is a 

 form of subdivision and reminds one of the cellular 

 method of reproduction by means of fission. In the 

 unicellular organism one can for the first time properly 

 use the term reproduction in its purely biological 

 sense. Yet one is in reality not dealing with something 

 that is so entirely new. "Re-production" of structure 

 has been an essential phenomenon in relatively less 

 complex matter, otherwise it could not have persisted. 

 Now, merely the mechanism becomes far more intri- 

 cate as indeed the structure to be reproduced has sim- 

 ilarly become much more complex. It is interesting to 

 note that in the one-celled organisms (protozoa) , it is 

 the entire organism that reproduces by fission, while 

 the individual molecules comprising the cell perpetu- 

 ate their status by essentially the same process followed 

 in the virus stage, namely, by "template like" duplica- 

 tion of structure. It will be shown that, as one traces 

 the evolutionary ascent of life further to the point 

 where another integration of matter takes place, the 

 method of reproduction of structure followed by the 

 sub-units comprising the new entity, remains virtually 

 unaffected. 



Now while it is true that the general process of re- 

 production common to unicellular organisms is cell 

 division, or as the biologist would call it, mitosis, a 

 quite different process is occasionally found especially 



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