XI. THE SUMMARY OF PART IV 323 



the various parts of the body, presumably by making use of inorganic 

 ions as well as hormones and related substances, even if the genes 

 were similar througout the body. 



The so-called antibiotic agents, such as penicillin, and synthetic 

 chemotherapeutic agents, such as sulphonamide compounds, may be 

 effective because they can interfere with the action of genes of the 

 pathogens as do hormones. However, in contrast to hormones, the alter- 

 ation of the pattern induced by these agents is unfavourable for the 

 pathogenic organisms, presumably because of the extensive and pro- 

 found disturbances occurring in a variety of enzyme systems as a result 

 of the deformation of the pattern. Similar changes in enzyme systems 

 may occur in the cells following the infection with some virus which, 

 as a free gene, can interfere with the original gene. 



The primeval organisms generated in the oceans were advanced to 

 certain extents with the complication of their structure, meanwhile the 

 elementary bodies composing the organisms might differentiate to 

 possess various properties, and thus some of the elementary bodies might 

 become to contain nucleic acid in rich amount so that they would 

 behave as primitive genes. Since such bodies were provided with 

 stable and strong structures owing to the nucleic acid, they might 

 be able to transmit their structure to other organisms even when 

 liberated from the organisms. Thus such bodies would act as viruses 

 or free genes. 



Moreover, since the structure of such bodies might be reversible 

 owing to the rigidness, they would not be deprived of the reveVsibility 

 even when present in a v/eak individual, which had been assimilized 

 or devoured by a stronger individual, although thereby the transient 

 loss of their original pattern could occur, so that they might be able 

 to recover their original structure when freed from the influence of 

 the bodies or the genes of the stronger individual, and would be able 

 in turn to affect individuals which were still weaker than themselves. 

 On ,such a stage, the primitive organisms would be said to have only 

 a pair of genes. 



Further developments of the organisms would lead to further differ- 

 entiations in the protein structure of genes, resulting in the development 

 of strong structure in restricted portions of protein molecules; thus 

 different genes would come to be composed of different proteins which 

 have each strong structure at a different restricted portion of the 

 molecule. If two organisms containing each of such genes combined 



