COMPLEX COACERVATES AND PROTOPLASM 9,IC) 



water of hydration of the coacervate drops is different from 

 their solubility in ordinary water. 



A number of workers (D. Sabinin,®^ D. Nasonov,®^ A. S. 

 Troshin*^^ and others) who oppose the membrane theory of 

 the permeability of the cell, believe that its ability to take 

 in this or that substance from the surrounding medium and 

 to discharge it again is a manifestation of the sorptive powers 

 of protoplasm, which can only be understood on the assump- 

 tion that protoplasm is a coacervate system. These authors, 

 therefore, attach very great significance to the study of the 

 mechanism of distribution of substances between a coacervate 

 and its equilibrium liquid in the attempt to work out the 

 theory of the uptake of substances by the living cell. 



The multifarious organic compounds of high molecular 

 weight which first arose in the waters of the primaeval ocean, 

 various polymeric carbohydrates, amino acids, nucleotides 

 and so forth, cannot have been fundamentally different in 

 their colloid-chemical properties from the polymeric com- 

 pounds with which we are familiar. 



In solutions of them, as in the solutions, to which we are 

 well accustomed, of proteins, polysaccharides or polynucleo- 

 tides, there must have been a pronounced tendency to the 

 formation of intermolecular associations. Complex coacervates 

 must have been formed with great readiness. As we have 

 seen above, the essential condition for this is the simultaneous 

 presence in a solution of two or several organic substances of 

 high molecular weight with different charges. The great 

 complexity and diversity of the chemical transformations 

 which took place in the primaeval hydrosphere must, in 

 themselves, have guaranteed that this condition would be 

 fulfilled. Therefore, sooner or later, at some point or another 

 in the primaeval ocean, there must necessarily have come into 

 existence collections of molecules of organic polymers and 

 their separation in particular places from the surrounding 

 medium to form drops of complex coacervates. 



This must have been largely facilitated by the relatively 

 very high concentrations of organic substances in the primi- 

 tive * terrestrial soup ' to which we have already drawn 

 attention. The formation of complex coacervates could, how- 

 ever, have occurred even when the concentration of organic 



