No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
A life with enzymes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Abstract
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
- Type
- Essay Reviews
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1991
References
1 Cf. Russell, N., ‘Towards a history of biology in the twentieth century: Directed autobiographies as historical sources’, British Journal for the History of Science (1988), 21, pp. 77–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2 Autobiography of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins in Hopkins and Biochemistry 1861–1947 (ed. Needham, J. and Baldwin, E.), Cambridge, 1949, p. 25.Google Scholar
3 Kornberg, A., ‘The biologic synthesis of the deoxyribonucleic acid Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1959’ in Nobel Lectures Physiology or Medicine 1942–1962, Amsterdam-London-New York, 1964, pp. 665–80.Google Scholar
4 Kornberg, A., ‘For the love of enzymes’ in Reflections on Biochemistry In Honour of Severo Ochoa (ed. Kornberg, A., Horecker, B. L., Cornudella, L. and Oró, J.), Oxford, 1976, pp. 243–51.Google Scholar
5 Cf. also: ‘In accounts I have since heard of the discovery of DNA polymerase, it is said that I included the DNA to serve as a template because of the role proposed for it two years earlier in the Watson and Crick model for replication… Not so. In the earliest experiments, I added DNA expecting that it would serve as a primer for growth of a DNA chain. I did this because I was influenced by the work of Carl and Gerty Cori on the growth of carbohydrate chains by glycogen phosphorylase. They were the first to show that assembly of a polymer, in this case a starch-like chain, depends on having a preformed chain to elongate. I never presumed, in exploring the synthesis of DNA, that I would immediately discover a phenomenon so utterly unprecedented in biochemistry: one in which an enzyme is absolutely dependent on its substrate, a template, for instruction’ (p. 153).
6 Green, D. E., ‘Biochemistry from the standpoint of enzymes’ in Currents in Biochemical Research (ed. Green, D. E.), New York, 1946, p. 149.Google Scholar
7 This draws on material in Teich, M. (with †Needham, D. M.), A Documentary History of Biochemistry c. 1770–1940 (to be published by Leicester University Press in 1991).Google Scholar
8 Cf. ‘In the thirty-year war of words with his enemies in chemistry, Pasteur emerged the clear victor but at an intolerable cost. He allied himself with the philosophy of vitalism, which held that life processes are not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry, and accepted the word “Life” as a substitute for specific chemical information. The main casualty of his misconception was modern biochemistry, which was kept beyond reach for at least another thirty years” (p. 34).
9 See Popper, K. R. and Eccles, J. C., The Self and its Brain, London, 1983, p. 225.Google Scholar
10 Needham, and Baldwin, , op.cit. (2), p. 244.Google Scholar
11 Among the few biochemists who then actively explored the understanding of phenomena of life in terms of lower and higher levels of complexity was Hopkins' pupil Joseph Needham. See, for example, his Integrative Levels; a Revaluation of the Idea of Progress (Herbert Spencer Lecture delivered at Oxford, 27 05 1937), Oxford, 1937Google Scholar. Reprinted in part in Modern Quarterly, (1938), i, pp. 25–50.Google Scholar
12 Krebs, H. A., ‘Enzyme activity and cellular structure” in Horizons in Biochemistry Albert Szent-Györgyi Dedicatory Volume (ed. Kasha, M. and Pullman, B.), New York, London, 1962, p. 285.Google Scholar