CONTENTS 



I. INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY 3 



Life 3 



The Organism 3 



The Cell and Organisms ' 4 



Life, Organism, Reproduction, and Assimilation 5 



II. THE PROBLEMS 7 



Organism and Molecules 7 



The Subject 9 



Metabolism 9 



Simplicity or Complexity 10 



Unity 10 



III. THE HEREDITARY ORDER: 



GENETIC INFORMATION 14 



Birth of the Modern Concept 14 



Necessity of Variation 15 



The Genetic Material Identified 17 



Transformation 17 



Structure of the Genetic Material 19 



Desoxyribonucleic acid 19 



Ribonucleic acid 21 



The Molecular Basis of Enzymatic Specificity 22 



Protein Synthesis: The Code 24 



Mutation 26 



The nucleic acid 26 



The "mutated" protein ' 28 



80141 



[ix] 



