"On protein synthesis"

Date:
1958
Reference:
PP/CRI/I/1/16
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: "On protein synthesis". Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Reprinted from the SYMPOSIA OF THE SOCIETY FOR EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY Number XII, The Biological Replication of Macromolecules. 1958 All rights reserved. printed in great B ritain ON PROTEIN SYNTHESIS B y F. H. C. CRICK Medical Research Council Unit for the Study of Molecular Biology, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge I. INTRODUCTION Protein synthesis is a large subject in a state of rapid development. To cover it completely in this article would be impossible. I have therefore deliber ately limited myself here to presenting a broad general view of the problem, emphasizing in particular well-established facts which require explanation, and only selecting from recent work those experiments whose implications seem likely to be of lasting significance. Much very recent work, often of great interest, has been omitted because its implications are not clear. I have also tried to relate the problem to the other central problems of molecular biology—those of gene action and nucleic acid synthesis. In short, I have written for the biologist rather than the biochemist, the general reader rather than the specialist. More technical reviews have appeared recently by Borsook (1956), Spiegelman (1957), and Simkin & Work (19576 and this Symposium). The importance of proteins It is an essential feature of my argument that in biology proteins are uniquely important. They are not to be classed with polysaccharides, for example, which by comparison play a very minor role. Their nearest rivals are the nucleic acids. Watson said to me, a few years ago, 'The most significant thing about the nucleic acids is that we don't know what they do.' By contrast the most significant thing about proteins is that they can do almost anything. In animals proteins are used for structural purposes, but this is not their main role, and indeed in plants this job is usually done by polysaccharides. The main function of proteins is to act as enzymes. Almost all chemical reactions in living systems are catalysed by enzymes, and all known enzymes are proteins. It is at first sight paradoxical that it is probably easier for an organism to produce a new protein than to produce a new small molecule, since to produce a new small molecule one or more new proteins will be required in any case to catalyse the reactions. I shall also argue that the main function of the genetic material is to control (not necessarily directly) the synthesis of proteins. There is a little direct evidence to support this, but to my mind the psychological drive behind this hypothesis is at the moment independent of such evidence.
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