CHAPTER 5 



The Very Big and the Very Small 

 Remarks on Conjugated Proteins'^ 



It is an old experience in the natural sciences that what is poison 

 for one generation often is honey for the succeeding one. Whether 

 this indicates, in a given case, the dawn of a better era or an 

 inurement by frequent exposure to sublethal doses of truth often 

 cannot be decided without the perspective of centuries. There are 

 important exceptions, but in general a scientific truth fades every 

 30 years, to be replaced by another equally evanescent. A well- 

 designed and well-constructed chair lasts longer. 



It is not very long ago that the extreme contempt for the 

 amorphous and intractable, felt by generations of organic 

 chemists (or at least by the second-rate specimens), has made 

 room for the realization that there is little sense in treating living 

 and growing tissue merely as the starting material for the isolation 

 of well-behaved crystalline substances. In recent times, the respect 

 for nature and its multiform manifestations (as such a very 

 healthy sign) has, in fact, sometimes assumed exaggerated 

 proportions; and it is occasionally necessary to point out that the 

 living cell is not simply a macromolecule with a skin, or the 

 bacteriophage a nucleoprotein with a tail. So-called model ex- 

 periments often are carried to incredible lengths, prompting one 

 to say that confusion superimposed on complexity may produce 

 papers, but not results, and that a skunk dipped into chlorophyll 

 is not yet an apple tree. The secret of the organization of the cell 

 will not be found by a clever sleight of hand. 



* Reprinted with permission from S. Graff (Ed.), Essays in Biochemis- 

 try, Wiley and Sons, New York, 1956, pp. 72-76. 



