PHOTOSYNTHESIS 



AND THE PRODUCTION OF 



ORGANIC MATTER ON EARTH 



H. GAFFRON, research associate, professor, departments of bio- 

 chemistry AND chemistry (fELS FUNd), UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 



Practical Importance of the Assimilation of Carbon Dioxide 



We know, for example, that if we abuse the soil, it will 

 lose its fertility, that if we massacre the forests, our 

 children will lack timber and see their uplands eroded, 

 their valleys swept by floods. Nevertheless, we continue 

 to abuse the soil and massacre the forests ... in the 

 simple affairs of nature, where we know quite well what 

 is likely to happen we immolate the future to the present. 

 " Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." 



K 



ALDOUS HUXLEY, Time Must Have a Stop, p. 298. 



TVEN the less informed layman is aware of the reaction 

 which makes possible the abundance of living things on 

 earth- — the conversion in daylight by plants of carbon dioxide and 

 water, the waste products of plant and animal life, back into food. 

 This reconversion is called the assimilation of carbon, or photosyn- 

 thesis. Hardly ever does the layman spend another thought on this 

 fundamental and quite spectacular achievement of living cells. If, 

 however, he suddenly realizes that, without this reaction, life as we 

 know it would perish quickly and completely (except for a few species 

 of bacteria), he is likely to place false hopes on its artificial reproduction 

 by the toiling scientist. He probably believes that mankind's in- 



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