50 INTRODUCTION TO CYTOLOGY 



form the cell organs, but is rather a colloidal system in which special 

 processes and functions have become localized and fixed in certain regions; 

 and this in turn has resulted in the evolution of organs possessing more 

 or less permanence. 



Chemical Theories. — Much more suggestive, if not conclusive, have 

 been certain attempts to place the phenomena of the organism upon a 

 purely chemical basis. With the development of organic chemistry from 

 the time of Wohler's (1828) synthesis of urea onward there has grown 

 up the idea that life processes and chemical reaction not only resemble 

 each other but are actually the same fundamentally. When protoplasm 

 was subjected to chemical anatysis and found to consist chiefly of water 

 and proteins, and when these substances became more intimately known, 

 the task of explaining the activity of protoplasm in terms of the chemis- 

 try of proteins was undertaken. One group of workers developed the 

 hypothesis that peculiarly labile protein molecules are responsible for 

 the organism's reactions, "death ,; being primarily a change from the 

 labile to the stable condition on the part of these molecules. Such 

 molecules were called "biogens ,; by Verworn (1903). The molecule 

 itself was not thought of as alive, but its constitution was held to be the 

 basis of life, which "results from the chemical transformations which its 

 lability makes possible." Accordingly, "life itself consists in chemical 

 change, not in chemical constitution" (Child 1915). 



A-dami (1908, 1918) contends that life is thus "the function, or sum of 

 functions, of a special order of molecules." These ultimate molecules of 

 living matter he calls biophores (not to be confused with the biophores 

 of Weismann, which were molecular complexes), and he locates them in 

 the nucleus, the cytoplasm having merely "subvital" functions. They 

 are proteidogenous in nature, i.e., they compose an active substance 

 which takes the form of relatively inert proteins when subjected to 

 chemical analysis. The biophore is conceived by Adami to have the 

 form of a ring or a ring of rings of the benzene type — a ring of amino acid 

 radicles with many unsatisfied affinities or bonds. The biophore grows 

 in a manner analogous to that of the inorganic crystal: ions and radicles 

 from the surrounding medium become attached as side chains to the free 

 bonds of the central ring and take on a grouping similar to that of the 

 latter; in this way the biophoric molecules are multiplied. Since side 

 chains can be detached and new ones of other kinds added, the biophore 

 is changeable and may exist in many different forms. Although the 

 central ring is thought to be relatively stable and fixed, the variety of side 

 chains and their many possible arrangements probably give to each 

 species a distinct kind of biophore. On this hypothesis the molecule of 

 living matter (biophore) is one "of extraordinary complexity, and in a 

 state of constant unsatisfaction, built up by linking on other simple 

 molecules, and as constantly, in the performance of function, giving up 



