REACTIONS IN LIVING MATTER 



means are available in living cells to produce such 

 results. We have now to bring together the sub- 

 stance which we had examined in its reactions in 

 living cells with other substances in vitro. So we 

 see whether analogous influences may be exerted 

 by some substances contained in cells or not. 

 We compare the artificial reaction outside the 

 organism with the vital reactions, and are enabled 

 to draw conclusions from our experiment for the 

 chemical reactions in living protoplasm. Striking 

 parallelism and resemblance are observed. 



Such results, however, are incomplete, and 

 have been obtained only with certain groups of 

 substances. During the last decades biochemists 

 have more and more aimed at the study of the 

 total complex of the living cell after its death in 

 its reactions to certain substances. The earliest 

 experiments employed macerated tissue or whole 

 cells of microbes under conditions which prevented 

 decomposition by living bacteria. Salkowski 

 twenty-five years ago allowed yeast to stand with 

 water and some chloroform, that he might study 

 the post-mortem transformation in this deposit of 

 cells. It. was shown that many of the contents 

 of the living yeast cell undergo great change 

 under such conditions, and new substances were 

 found as products of such chemical reactions. 

 Such chemical transformation in dead cells where 

 microbial decomposition is excluded, is called 

 Autolysis. Of late very ingenious autolytical 

 F 65 



