192 AMPHISBAENA 



o: 



How do you know? Did you talk with them lately? But let me 

 return to our argument. When DNA gives play to the friendlier 

 part of its nature, the first thing it does, I am told, is to preside 

 over the manufacture of messenger RNA. This RNA is said to 

 show the composition regularities of the entire DNA. If the latter 

 really consists of two complementary strands, this must mean 

 that two complementary RNA strands, or a mixture of shorter 

 pieces amounting in the aggregate to two such strands, have been 

 made. To put it more concretely, a triple uracil in one messenger 

 polynucleotide would have to correspond to a triple adenine in 

 the complementary RNA structure. Since a ribosome — "they also 

 serve who only stand and wait" — can make a protein only when 

 it is "programmed" by a messenger RNA which on the whole 

 cannot be a double strand, as it must be able to engage in specific 

 hydrogen-bonding, the conclusion would have to be that any 

 given section of a DNA dyad should give rise to two entirely 

 different proteins. Would you consequently subscribe to the 

 revised slogan "one gene, two enzymes"? 



y: 

 Well, I don't know. There are hundred ways out. 



o: 

 But should a scientist behave like a tracked cockroach? I know, 

 almost anything you can write on a piece of paper will eventually 

 be realized in a so-called system and then it will form a "fact". 

 I cannot help feeling, however, that not all facts are equally 

 worth knowing. I thought it was the task of the natural sciences 

 to discover the facts of nature, not to create them. 



y: 

 You are just an obscurantist. 



o: 

 I have often been accused of spreading darkness. And I cannot 



