284 F. CEDRANGOLO 



be considered lightly, considering that we are dealing with a phenomenon of a 

 simple aggregation or molecular polymerization (polymerization through con- 

 densation) reaction, or rather a series of reactions, in which evidently it is 

 playing a relationship of direct proportionality between the quantity' of the 

 substances reacting (amino acids) and the quantity of substances formed in the 

 reaction (proteins), following the well-known law of mass action. At this point 

 it must be noted that the quantity of amino acids which presumably have been 

 formed during the primitive condition of Earth must have been not too small, 

 considering that in the Miller apparatus the yield of amino acids has been of the 

 order of some milhgrammes ! 



(2) that, once admitted the casual appearance of some special molecular con- 

 figuration, for example of the type of virus or gene substance, one is not obliged 

 to think that it is necessary to wait again a chance so that these molecules have 

 been produced many time successively; because these particular configurations 

 could have shown, since the first moment, that property which is particular to 

 the virus and to the genie substance, that is the property of autoduphcation* : 

 namely, the property to synthesize a new molecule completely identical to the 

 pattern. The idea and the considerations referred to above, however, suggest the 

 hypothesis that at one determined stage of the Earth, a multiphcity and a variety 

 of protein macromolecules, or better nucleoproteins, endowed with the power 

 of autoduplication, have appeared. These molecules would have Uved, so we 

 say, in close association with themselves and with other organic substances in 

 fluid masses and in microscopic drops, inside of some particular system that 

 Oparin [4], using Bungenberg de Jong's teminology, called 'coacervate'. These 

 macromolecules would not have been very different from the macromolecules 

 of the actual virus and genie substancesf. These macromolecules, because they 



* Peculiar character of living beings is reproducibility. This character must not be 

 considered today only from the cellular point of view, that is to say, that one cell has 

 the possibility to reproduce another cell, but also from the molecular point of view, that 

 is that the model macromolecules are able to synthesize new macromolecules perfectly 

 identical to the model. It is a process that today has been defined as a process of auto- 

 reproduction, or of autosynthesis or of duplication. This process underlines every protein 

 or nucleic acid synthesis and has a fundamental importance also for the science of 

 genetics to know the mechanism of the transmission of the hereditary character in the 

 descendant and for pathology to know how the virus grows. This process looks very 

 much like the process of continuous formation of new strata on the superficial layer of 

 crystal. Also for the process of autosynthesis of the great organic molecules we must 

 imagine that the element of the daughter layer assumes on the surface of the pattern the 

 same spatial orientation of the pattern, that is to say, from the back to tlie front against 

 the pattern [12]. Today in consideration of what has been said above [9-10], we can 

 also admit that the model can be structurally different from the substance which is syn- 

 thesized, for example, when it is supposed that a determined ribonucleic acid can be 

 used as a model for the synthesis of a determined protein. Nevertheless between the 

 model and the synthesized product there must always be a determined relationship in 

 length and space; this, at least generally speaking, makes the second similar to the first. 



"(■ In reality, as is known, the molecules of viruses and genie substances are not simple 

 proteins, but nucleoproteins. However, in this paper it was believed sufficient to consider, 

 often for simplification, these molecules as simple proteins, especially because the diffi- 

 culties that can be imagined for the synthesis and the biosynthesis of the protein group 

 are surely not inferior to those that can be imagined for the synthesis and biosynthesis 

 of nucleic acids. 



