Information Content and Biotopology of the Cell in Terms of Cell Organelles 225 



along the kinety; these units act to polarize; the array of kinetics (or entire 

 pelhcle system) functions to envelop the endoplasm of the whole animal. It 

 also functions to anchor in place other systems such as the food intake or gullet 

 system. The anchorage confers a new level of asymmetry, resulting in the 

 swimming function to scan or spiral; the function of the peniculus and quadrulus 

 is to sweep food particles down the intake tube; their terminal cilia act to form 

 food vacuoles (FV); the cilia-free ribbed wall functions to confer rigidity and 

 to hold open the tube, which lies within the endoplasm; the gullet system also 

 functions to envelop (k,',-) the endoplasm. This graph may be read in the 

 following way: effective beating of a kinety cilium requires polarization; both 

 functions require positioning upon the pellicle by latitudinal linking to adjacent 

 kinetics (A:/s) ; the previous functions require packing (a continuously surfaced 

 pellicle). Longitudinal linkage {k^) is required to prevent the dispersion of the 

 surface blocks from within a kinety. Each kinety organelle may perform every 

 function, but locally any function may be by-passed. The function to scan 

 requires anchorage of the gullet organelle-complexes in position on the animal; 

 the gullet's general function is to feed. An effective food vacuole requires that 

 food be swept into it by the cilia of the peniculus and quadrulus ; these functions 

 require that the gullet be held open by the gullet tube-wall, which requires 

 anchorage to the pellicle. The general function of envelopment requires the 

 linkage of all ^/s and A:/s. (A nearly unique quality of the ciliated protozoa, 

 which, however, should not be entirely ignored in the transformations to 

 higher forms, is the presence of what might be called 'linkage groupings' 

 in the cytoplasm: organelle patterns, far more complex than any known 

 in the metazoa, appear to be as much dependent upon the previous existence 

 of a related pattern in the cytoplasm as upon any nuclear genes (49); even 

 Stentor, with its remarkable capacity to regenerate 'kinetics' (actually pig- 

 mented stripes), rebuilds its mouth organelles only when a particular juncture 

 of maximum anisotropy in the stripe pattern is available (35).) Organelle- 

 functions are therefore given not in the terminology of the molecular level (whose 

 necessary though not strictly pertinent relations are partially represented for the 

 whole cell topologically in such graphs as those of the glycolytic and citric acid 

 cycles (50)) but in the correspondingly appropriate terms of the gross operations 

 performed. 



According to this concept, the cell is entirely describable in minute detail 

 of anatomical pattern without reference to either power or fuel. It does not 

 matter whether the oar-like cilia are tugged by galley-slaves, gasoline engines 

 or a creatine-phosphate-ATP system. However, the universal usage by cells of 

 such engines places some restriction at the systems-coupling level, and probably 

 represents a nearly unique solution of the bioenergetics problem. If the model is 

 correct, the most complex patterns are entirely derivable by just such remarkably 

 simple interactions as those first explicitly delineated by D'Arcy Thompson (12). 



In summary, at the organelle level fundamental topological sets are recog- 

 nized of two classes: those that are periodically disjoined (intranuclear from 

 extranuclear organelles), and those that are continuously joined at non-empty 

 intersections (cytoplasmic organelle-systems). Periodic coupling processes (such 

 as during mitosis and nuclear membrane disappearance) occur to form non- 

 empty intersections at all disjunctions of the first class. Below this dimensional 



