114 



FIRST STEPS TOWARDS A CHEMISTRY OF HEREDITY 



the signals — summa cellulae — that preside over the maintenance 

 of the hereditary processes, ensuring the unaltered transfer of all 

 specificity characteristics of the mother cell to the daughter cells. 

 We could then ask, but without much hope of an immediate and 

 decisive answer: What is the content of biological information 

 and what are its carriers; how is it preserved and how is it trans- 

 ferred; and what are the agents of such information transfers? If 

 we knew the answers to these questions, we should have made 

 more than the first steps towards a chemistry of heredity. If, on 

 the other hand, we continue the criminal nonsense of filling our 

 world with ever increasing quantities of ionizing radiation, we 

 may soon be able to speak of the last steps towards a chemistry 

 of heredity. 



Lipid Polysaccharide 



Fig. 10. 



As to the content of biological information, the answer will 

 depend upon whether the assumption I made a few minutes ago 

 proves correct, namely, that the nucleic acids and the proteins, 

 especially the conjugated proteins^-, are the principal, or even 

 the sole, agents directing the maintenance of cellular specificity. 

 In statements of this kind, allowance must be made for the neces- 

 sity that we shall look as stupid to our successors of 2058 as our 

 predecessors of 100 years ago look to us. In other words, we may 

 be able to run away from our past, but never from our future. 



The other questions are even more difficult to answer, for they 

 refer to what may be called the flow of biological information; 

 and it is here that our real language difficulties begin. There must 

 exist in the cell a system of extremely rigid controls that supervise 



