REMARKS ON FUNCTIONS 73 



observations having grown out of experiments, we should not 

 forget that regularities of this sort may be the best, or only, means 

 of recognizing the existence of systems concerned with the 

 preservation, or the transfer, of information: tasks that we should 

 like to assign to the nucleic acids or, more probably, to the 

 nucleoproteins. A man standing at the street entrance of a subway 

 station may notice that the efflux of passengers, in contrast to 

 their inflow, showed a very marked periodicity or regularity; he 

 would rightly conclude that the trains operated according to a 

 schedule, and this might be the only way in which he could 

 reconstruct a timetable: the information was conveyed to the 

 observer by the imposition of a regularity of which the pas- 

 sengers themselves could have been unaware. 



In the speculations on the biological role of the nucleic acids 

 the nucleoproteins usually are neglected. I believe this to be a 

 mistake. There is Httle evidence that the nucleic acids occur in 

 living matter in the free state. Though it is possible that the 

 conjugated proteins in which nucleic acids are found represent 

 artifacts resulting from fortuitous combination, this is not likely. 

 One could, in fact, assume that if specific nucleotide sequences 

 are the actual genetic determinants, they could give rise, in com- 

 bination with proteins, to unique geometrical shapes, so that — 

 through the association of a specific polynucleotide and a specific 

 polypeptide — another dimension, as it were, is produced. I may 

 refer to a discussion of some of these problems in which the 

 inheritance of geometrical peculiarities was considered in anal- 

 ogy to problems in topology ^^. 



In any event, there can be little doubt that methods for the 

 sequence analysis of nucleic acids are most urgently needed. We 

 are still very far from it; we cannot yet say whether a nucleic 

 acid molecule should be considered as the carrier of the infor- 

 mation assigned to one gene or whether — and this appears more 

 likely to me — one and the same molecule represented a string 

 carrying multiple potential information, similar to the knot 

 writing of ancient Peru, the quipu. 



The copying mechanism suggested for deoxyribonucleic acid^^ 



References p. 75 



