Biological thought and chemical thought : a plea for unification the Linacre lecture for 1938 delivered at Cambridge on May 6th / by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins.

  • Frederick Hopkins
Date:
[1938?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biological thought and chemical thought : a plea for unification the Linacre lecture for 1938 delivered at Cambridge on May 6th / by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/24 page 6
    metabolism proceed in fact because they are catalysed, and on lines not differing in fundamentals from those of catalysis as observed in the inorganic world. I sometimes find it hard on looking back to realise that, though the catalytic activity of enzymes outside the cell had been long known, the belief that they play so dominant a part in the interior economy of every living system was not reached till the very end of the last century. Even then the conception of intracellular enzymic activities was distasteful to many, and by not a few contemporary writers their real significance was doubted, or the extent of their influence minimised. I will now discuss with all possible brevity certain current conceptions in the field of what is often spoken of as biocatalysis. I must first make some reference to the colloidal structures of the cell, on which of course so many of its most fundamental properties and its visible behaviour depend. When during earlier stages in the development of colloid science its data were applied to living systems, there was much emphasis on the general properties of surfaces and interfaces; but there was then but little understanding of how diverse and _ specific these properties may be. When thinking of those myriad chemical reactions (essential to the display of life) which simple molecules undergo in the aqueous phases of the cell, some of us were too apt to think of its colloidal complexes as just a special type of apparatus in which these reactions were suitably accommodated. But the recent great advances in our knowledge of surfaces, in particular of what has been called their “ molecular anatomy,” which in this or that case endows a surface with quite specialised properties, has shown that the due progress of the reactions is very intimately connected with the properties of the colloidal structures. Physical chemistry and organic chemistry here meet together. The remarkable recent increase in our knowledge of the intimacies of complex protein molecules which the application of physical and physicochemical methods is just now providing has here to be remembered. Though colloidal, these large molecules may yet be very “active.” Many, if not all, enzymes for instance seem to be specialised proteins, and the isolation of many potent plant viruses, in the accom- plishment of which my colleague Mr. N. W. Pirie
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image