SPECIFICITY OF LONDON-EISENSCHITZ-WANG FORCE 51 



known parallel for this in the phenomenon of synapsis, . . . and one has only 

 to suppose that this phenomenon may extend even to the parts of the gene as 

 they are put together during the process of its duplication, to get an explana- 

 tion of duplication in terms of this remarkable synaptic force." 



"There is the apparently insuperable difficulty in attraction at a distance 

 . . . , for the lines of force from different parts would become too dispersed and 

 mixed with one another. It would therefore seem necessary, for explaining a 

 self-specific pattern capable of operating at a distance, to postulate that it is 

 expressed in the form of a temporal fluctuation, that is, a vibrational effect of 

 some sort, varying with each gene." 



In other words: A macromolecule or complex which is carrier of genetic 

 properties — let us call it a "gene" for the present — is assumed to be assembled 

 by the original gene itself from smaller "constituent molecules of the gene", 

 that is the process is described as "selfduplication". Constituent molecules are 

 defined on the one hand as small enough so that they can be assumed to be 

 readily available in the surrounding cell medium, and on the other hand large 

 enough so that the specificity of the London force is the determining factor 

 in the interaction. Brownian motion brings, with great rapidity, all kinds of 

 molecules into the neighborhood of the original gene. Those molecules which 

 happen to be identical with the gene's respective constituent molecules will 

 be retained in their neighborhood, with compensating gegenions from the me- 

 dium interspersed between the identical partners. 



The assembly process might actually involve several steps, the formation of 

 chain segments or of chains, and of helixes like the DNA or protein helix, or of 

 sheets, and the folding up or arraying of these basic structures into more com- 

 plex units. 



It is important to consider two universal properties of the gene duplication 

 process : 



(1) The stability of the gene which permits it to go unharmed through mil- 

 lions of duplication processes. In view of this extraordinary stability it seems 

 that the structure which guarantees the stability of the gene (whether it is 

 simply a part of a DNA helix, or whether it is a more complex folded structure, 

 the type of folding of which is essential to the specificity of the gene), should 

 never be ripped apart during the duplication process. In that way the stability 

 of the gene is not put in jeopardy. 



(2) The accuracy of the replica formation. If one uses only the principles of 

 affinity and steric compatibility between the parts of the replica, i.e. intra- 

 molecular bond and steric recjuirements inside the daughter structure itself, 

 that will not be enough to guarantee correct replication. (If a Watson Crick 

 helix is ripped into halves, it loses its formerly well determined structure at the 

 growth region where it is being ripped apart; the free nucleotide is flexible too, 

 thus it is difficult to see how complementarity can effectively become operative 



