608 Annals New York Academy of Sciences 



scientist is right or wrong. The problem is basically biological. To the biolo- 

 gist it should be of no importance, as far as identitication goes, whether the 

 "organized elements" came from meteorites, from outer space, or from some- 

 where else; all that should matter is whether the "organized elements" can be 

 identified as remnants of once living matter. Cholnoky emphasized that he is 

 a microbiologist, who has spent 51 years studying microorganisms. He is not 

 particularly interested, he stated, in fossils in meteorites, as such, but only in 

 life forms in general. 



There were then two main points which he wanted to make: First, he ex- 

 pressed his surprise that physicists and chemists seemed willing to offer critical 

 evaluations regarding the biogenicity of organic microstructures. As a biolo- 

 gist, he would never think himself competent to comment on purely chemical 

 and physical problems. He suggested that physicists and chemists adopt a 

 similar attitude regarding biological problems. Consecjuently, he believed 

 that the suggestion put forth in an earlier paper by investigators from Florida 

 i.e., that protenoid coacervates may resemble living cells in appearance, must be 

 rejected. The methods of identification of these must be judged as insufficient; 

 any identification of strains of coacervates must be submitted to experts. 

 Although experiments with coacervates go back to the work of dejong, and were 

 designed to investigate vacuole formations, dejong never said anything about 

 cell walls. 



Secondly, Cholnoky commented on claims that the "organized elements" in 

 carbonaceous meteorites were only grains of starch or pollen contaminations. 

 He said he has seen starch grains under microscopes on innumerable occasions 

 and could not identify the "organized elements" as starch grains. To argue a 

 point at meetings with photographic evidence was not satisfactory, since micro- 

 organisms are three dimensional and their morphology cannot be adequately 

 represented in two dimensional photographs. 



Sidney W. Fox {Institute for Space Biosciences, Florida State University, 

 Tallahassee, Florida) : The discussant stated that he had heard the word Florida 

 mentioned, so he assumed Cholnoky's first point was in reference to his work. 

 He wondered if Cholnoky had made correct distinctions. The Florida group 

 works with microspheres, which can be separated by centrifugation; these 

 microspheres are more stable than the Oparin coacervate droplets. He wanted 

 to make another point, which he had forgotten to mention at the earlier session 

 that day. Should the micropaleontologists and meteorite investigators con- 

 clude that the "organized elements" were not fossils of micro-organisms, but 

 preprotobionata, i.e., a type of abiotic microspheres, then this would be an even 

 more significant finding, because it would indicate the discovery of precursor 

 organic particles from which life forms could have later evolved. 



Robert Ross {Department of Botany, British Museum of Natural History, 

 London, England) : This discussant reported on his own studies of the Orgueil 

 meteorite: 



The Orgueil meteorite fall consisted of about 20 stones. Two of the speci- 

 mens at the British Museum (Natural History) arrived there as complete 

 stones. He had studied one of these, which had not yet been examined for 

 "organized elements" by other workers. In straight crushed preparations, he 



