192 Nature of the Genetic Material 



replaced by a concept of unified action of a field type which results 

 in a hierarchical order of not strictly delimited fields. The formulation 

 of such ideas is necessarily not specific enough to be entirely satisfying. 

 A completely satisfactory theory can be developed only in the future, 

 when biochemists have explored the molecular structure and physical 

 properties of supermolecules, far beyond the size and complication of 

 structure of the largest known units. If the chromosome is not a 

 mechanical assembly of many different molecules, kept together for 

 the sake of equal distribution, but a hypermolecular unit, we must 

 look for a structure in which entire, chemically different nucleoprotein 

 molecules are assembled into a supermolecule after the model of 

 amino acids being assembled into an ordinary protein molecule. The 

 resulting units may have completely unexpected physical and chemical 

 properties which might give specific and detailed meaning to what we 

 can conceive today only in the general terms (e.g., fields) that were 

 used in the discussion. (See, above, the discussion of Mazia's 1954 

 findings. ) 



