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SIDNEY W. FOX 



One of these is the imide structure for aspartic acid peptides, as first proposed 

 by Ko vacs & Koenyves [ii]: 



NH,— CH — C 



/ 



N- 



CH,— C 



\ 



O 



— CH — C 



\ 



o 



N — — CH —COOK 



CH,— C 



\ 



O / „ CHo— COOH 



and confirmed in studies in our laboratory (A. Vegotsky et al., unpublished 

 experiments). This structure has been found in bacitracin hydrolysate [14] and 

 is suggested for search in proteins (A. Vegotsky et ah, unpubhshed experiments). 



Another instance of pioneering by thermal experimentation is provided by 

 the fact that it was possible to suggest in May of 1955 that anabolism involving 

 the tricarboxylic acid cycle, the urea cycle, pyrimidine biosynthesis, amino acid 

 biosynthesis, and protein biosynthesis was a joint phenomenon [12]. More 

 recently, Reichard & Hanshoff [15] have pointed out the joint relationship of 

 the first three of these five pathways on the basis of results from experiments 

 employing more traditional biochemical techniques. 



The unified thermal theory provides an answer for the vexing problem of how 

 such a profusion of biochemical intermediates and processes could have 

 originated. 



The answer stresses the effect of an exponentially increasing number of bio- 

 chemical substances which can result when a sustained input of energy, such 

 as the thermal, acts upon a few simple organic compounds of the appropriate 

 selection. The recorded and unrecorded thermal experiments indicate that 

 increase in number of chromogenic substances in chromatograms tends to 

 accelerate as heating is maintained. Against this background, one can visualize 

 how an organism may emerge from its biochemical matrix, which at that 

 moment becomes environment, with a full complement of substances. This 

 pathway to profusion of substances is compatible with the notion, derived from 

 the loss nature of mutants [16], that the first organism was quite fully equipped 

 biochemically. 



The biochemical inferences to this point are drawn essentially from experi- 

 ments in our laboratories. If these inferences are correlated with other thinking 

 a larger picture can be formulated. The origin of the first organism can be 

 visualized as an extension of biochemical emergence, inasmuch as the thermal 

 experiments suggest the appearance, in overlapping order, of reactions, protein, 

 and nucleic acid. When translated into functional terms this sequence is ana- 

 bolism-enzyme-gene and recalls the Beadle concept of control of anabolism 

 though the hierarchy of gene-enzyme-metabolism [16]. This picture is presented 

 in Fig. 4. The first step may be a long slow process, but once the second stage 

 is reached the process is most easily understood as a rapid one. The first turn 



