AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Division and growth are the basic phenomena of life. Yet, the mechanics of these processes can never be adequately understood if they be regarded as singularly "vital" activities. For, fundamentally, the cell including all its morphological counterparts, is constituted of the same unit as is the inanimate world, namely the molecule. And, because of this common factor in structure, the reactions involved in an activity as cell-division may be interpreted in terms of those properties of molecular behaviour already investigated and known. Thus, solute molecules in a supersaturated solution which orient and attach themselves to a growing crystal, furnish one approach to the study of gene duplication. [...]