500 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



POSSIBILITY OF THE SYNTHESIS OF LIVING MATTER. 



Further, in its chemical composition we are no longer compelled 

 to consider living substance as possessing infinite complexity, as was 

 thought to be the case when chemists first began to break up the 

 proteins of the body into then' simpler constituents. The researches 

 of Miescher, which have been continued and elaborated by Kossel 

 and his pupils, have acquamted us with the fact that a body so 

 important for the nutritive and reproductive functions of the cell as 

 the nucleus — which may be said indeed to represent the quintessence 

 of cell life — possesses a chemical constitution of no very great com- 

 plexity; so that we may even hope some day to see the material 

 which composes it prepared synthetically. And when we consider 

 that the nucleus is not only itself formed of living substance, but is 

 capable of causmg other living substance to be built up — is, in fact, 

 the directing agent m all the principal chemical changes which take 

 place within the living cell — it must be admitted that we are a long 

 step forward in our knowledge of the chemical basis of life. That it 

 is the form of nuclear matter rather than its chemical and molecular 

 structure which is the important factor in nuclear activity can not 

 be supposed. The form of nuclei, as every microscopist knows, 

 varies infinitely, and there are numerous living organisms in which 

 the nuclear matter is without form, appearing simply as granules 

 distributed in the protoplasm. Not that the form assumed and the 

 transformations undergone by the nucleus are without importance; 

 but it is none the less true that even in an amorphous condition the 

 material which in the ordinary cell takes the form of a "nucleus" 

 may, in simpler organisms which have not in the process of evolution 

 become complete cells, fulfill functions in many respects similar to 

 those fulfilled by the nucleus of the more differentiated organism. 



A similar anticipation regarding the probability of eventual syn- 

 thetic production may be made for the proteins of the cell substance. 

 Considerable progress in this direction has indeed already been made 

 by Emil Fischer, who has for many years been engaged in the task of 

 building up the nitrogenous combinations which enter into the forma- 

 tion of the complex molecule of protein. It is satisfactory to know 

 that the significance of the work both of Fischer and of Kossel in 

 this field of biological chemistry has been recognized by the award 

 to each of these distmguished chemists of a Nobel prize. 



THE CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OP LIVING SUBSTANCE. 



The elements composmg living substance are few in number. 

 Those which are constantly present are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 

 and nitrogen. With these, both in nuclear matter and also, but to a 

 less degree, in the more diffuse living material which we know as 



