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THUKbDAY, DECEMBER i, 1921. 



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A Proposed National Institute of 

 Industrial Micro-biology. 



IN no department of chemistry has greater pro- 

 gress been made during comparatively recent 

 years than in biochemistry — the youngest and in 

 some respects the most fascinating of the various 

 branches into which chemical science has, for 

 purposes of convenience, been partitioned. The 

 beauty, the mystery, and the deep import of the 

 phenomena with which biochemistry is concerned 

 cannot fail to make a strong appeal to the scien- 

 tific imagination, even at a time when brilliant 

 and fundamental discoveries in other branches of 

 chemistry are so insistently claiming our attention 

 and exciting our admiration and wonder. 



Even if familiarity does not necessarily breed 

 contempt, it often has a strong tendency to beget 

 indifference, and this, coupled with the fact that 

 biochemical phenomena are not, as a rule, of an 

 arresting or spectacular nature, probably accounts 

 largely for the lack of interest shown by chemists 

 in general for so many years in this field of 

 chemical inquiry. It is, however, this very 

 absence of all that is spectacular or suggestive 

 of difficulty or effort that makes the biochemical 

 or life-processes so wonderful and so worthy of 

 our closest study. 



When we compare the synthetical methods of 

 our laboratories with those of Nature we cannot 

 fail to be struck with the essential crudity of the 

 former. Great as were the intellectual achieve- 

 ments involved in the synthesis of, say, indigo, 

 alizarin, nicotine, or camphor, it is certain that 

 those and many other natural compounds are 

 NO 2718, VOL. 108] 



manufactured by the plant in a much more efficient 

 and less wasteful manner. 



By a close study of the way in which living 

 organisms perform their remarkable feats of 

 building up and breaking down, organic chemists 

 will, no doubt, be enabled in course of time to 

 dispense very largely with their fusion pots and 

 their autoclaves and to work more closely on the 

 lines of the living cell, at any rate so far as the 

 synthesis of naturally occurring compounds is 

 concerned. To this end intensive study of the 

 phenomena of colloidal chemistry and of the 

 nature of enzyme action (including the function of 

 "activators" and "accelerators") becomes of the 

 highest moment. This aspect of the matter has 

 recently received consideration in two important 

 and very suggestive presidential addresses — that 

 of Sir William Pope to the Society of Chemical 

 Industr}', in Montreal; and that of Dr. M. O. 

 Forster to the chemistry section of the British 

 Association, in Edinburgh. I may, perhaps, be 

 permitted to point out that it also formed the 

 leit motif of my recent Cantor lectures on 

 "Micro-organisms and some of their Industrial 

 Uses." 



In the micro-organism as a living cell we have 

 a chemical laboratory of the highest efficiency and 

 of the most remarkable character, and could we 

 but understand and imitate artificially the pro- 

 cesses of synthesis and analysis which are so 

 quietly and so regularly occurring in, say, a single 

 cell of yeast, we should be not only within 

 measurable distance of a new industrial organic 

 chemistry, but also we should be a little nearer to 

 an understanding of that greatest of all problems 

 — the nature of life. 



Whether, with the growth of chemical know- 

 ledge, the services of the living cell in connection 

 with industrial operations will be ultimately dis- 

 pensed with only the future can show, but certain 

 it is that that time is still far distant. At present 

 a number of important industries are more or less 

 dependent on the activities of certain lowly 

 organisms, and from the point of view of suc- 

 cessful and efficient factory working alone, it is 

 essential that we should possess a very thorough 

 knowledge of the nature of those organisms and 

 of the influence of environment on their chemical 

 activities. From whatever point of view, there- 

 fore, we regard the study of- industrial micro- 

 biology, it is clear that its encouragement and 

 development are of high national concern. Any- 

 one who makes an unbiased survey of the work 

 done in this domain in various parts of the world 



