BIOSYNTHESIS OF PROTEINS 287 



J. D. Bernal has recently come to the same conchision on 

 the basis of his work ^vith viruses. At the end of his address 

 on this subject to the Moscow State University in 1955 Bernal 

 asked me the following question: In this case, which came 

 first, nucleic acids or proteins? 



This question reminds one somewhat of the scholastic 

 problem about the hen and the egg. The problem is insoluble 

 if we approach it metaphysically in isolation from the whole 

 previous history of the development of living matter. Nowa- 

 days e\ery hen comes from an egg and every hen's egg from 

 a hen. Similarly, nowadays proteins can only arise on the 

 basis of a system containing nucleic acids while nucleic acids 

 are formed only on the basis of a protein-containing system. 

 The hen and its egg developed from less highly organised 

 living things in the course of their evolution. In the same 

 way, both proteins and nucleic acids appeared as the result 

 of the evolution of whole protoplasmic systems which devel- 

 oped from simpler and less well adapted systems, that is to 

 say, from whole systems and not from isolated miolecules. It 

 would be qtiite wrong to imagine the isolated primary origin 

 either of proteins or of nucleic acids. 



Many contemporary authors do, however, follow this line 

 of thought. They take the view that in the first place nucleic 

 acids arose in some way and that at once, simply by virtue 

 of their intramolecular structure, they Avere able both to syn- 

 thesise proteins and to multiply themselves spontaneously. 

 It is, however, clear from all our previous discussion that a 

 hypothesis of this sort is in direct opposition to the facts as 

 they are at present known. 



An interesting attempt to bring these hypotheses into line 

 with contemporary scientific data is to be foimd in the 

 lecture given by L. Roka at a colloquium on comparative 

 biochemistry in April 1955 in Mosbach-Baden.^^° He gave 

 a clear account of the fact that the synthesis of nucleic 

 acids requires the presence of a complicated organisation of 

 metabolism and then put forward the suggestion that this 

 metabolism first arose simply in the waters of the primaeval 

 ocean. 



The transformation of polyphosphoric acid in these waters 

 also gave rise to the ' original matrix ', the molecule of 



