CATALYSIS: THE GUIDE OF LIFE 91 



it is the highly specific surfaces found in such biocatalysts as genes, 

 enzymes and similar areas, which direct the formation of the 

 specific chemical molecules that underlie all larger structures and 

 functions. Changes in biocatalysts or additions to their number, 

 where they are persistent or heritable, result in changes in the 

 biochemical output even under the same conditions; but the 

 demonstrable consequences of these changes in what I may call 

 the chemism or chemical output, may be so obscure and various 

 that we are deceived as to their common basic origin. 



It is believed that a wide range of biochemical and biological 

 phenomena are readily understandable on the basis of specific 

 catalysts, their formation and the changes which they undergo. 

 No other simple, basic and ubiquitous mechanism is equally con- 

 sonant with the extremely diverse experimental evidence over 

 such a far-flung range, which includes immunology, genetics, 

 embryology, medicine, evolution and paleontology. 



What Is Catalysis? 



A little over a century ago Jons Jakob Berzelius, the great Swed- 

 ish chemist and physician, coined the word "catalysis," and ac- 

 curately anticipated modern views of its nature. Since then, it 

 has been often erroneously taught that catalysts merely speed up 

 reactions that would naturally occur of themselves in the course 

 of "infinite time." Since time is of the essence of all biological 

 processes, such a view, even if true, would be purely academic. 

 Consider, therefore, the original statement of Berzelius. 1 



"It is then proved that several simple and compound bodies, 

 soluble and insoluble, have the property of exercising on other 

 bodies an action very different from chemical affinity. By means of 

 this action they produce in these bodies decomposition of these 

 elements and different recombinations of these same elements, to 

 which they themselves remain indifferent. 



"This new force, which was hitherto unknown, is common to 

 organic and inorganic nature. I do not believe that it is a force 

 quite independent of the electrochemical affinities of matter; I be- 

 lieve, on the contrary, that it is only a new manifestation of them, 

 but since we cannot see their connection and mutual dependence, 

 it will be more convenient to designate the force by a separate 

 name. I will therefore call this force the catalytic force, and will 

 call catalysis the decomposition of bodies by this force, in the same 



