Word: amino
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...oxygen in it, but was made of gases like methane, hydrogen and ammonia. Scientists have also proved that when this gaseous mixture is put in a flask with a little water in the bottom, and an electric discharge is passed through it, the chemical reaction produces an accumulation of amino acids in the water. Since amino acids are the building blocks out of which proteins are made, and proteins are the chemical framework of all life on earth, the first chemical step toward life could have come about naturally on the primitive earth, pushed by lightning flashes or perhaps cosmic...
Nature's next step toward life must have been to make proteins out of accumulated amino acids. Reasoning that parts of the primitive earth's surface may have been fairly hot, Dr. Fox mixed together the 18 amino acids common to the proteins of all living organisms and heated them gently. He got "proteinoids" that behave very much like proteins found in nature. They are digested by natural enzymes and eaten by bacteria. If polyphosphoric acid is added to the mix, the reaction takes place at only 160° F., well below the boiling point of water...
...dividing. How did nature make cells, with their permeable walls and juicy insides, out of assorted protein molecules? Dr. Fox does not think this is difficult; he has done something very like it himself. He dissolved in hot water some of the proteinoids that he made by heating amino acids. When he cooled the solution, billions of microspheres appeared, about the size of cocci (round bacteria) and looking very much like them. They shrink when salt is added, and this suggests that they are hollow and that their walls are slightly permeable like the cell walls of bacteria...
...does not claim that his microspheres are alive, but he thinks that something like them may have been a step in nature's progression toward life. If amino acids were continually raining down from the sky, it is natural to suppose that considerable quantities of them accumulated on fairly hot parts of the young earth's surface. The heat made them react, as in Dr. Fox's lab; after they had turned into proteinlike molecules, heavy rain dissolved them and washed them into the sea. There they cooled and formed microspheres, each of which packaged together...
...striking drop in TB mortality in the last few years (to about 12,000 in 1959) has been brought about by treatment with one or more of three wonder drugs: streptomycin (1944), para-amino-salicylic acid or PAS (1944) and isoniazid (1951). Eradication of the disease depends on full use of drugs, following aggressive case finding. There are now 400,000 known TB victims in the U.S. (150,000 with active disease), and an estimated additional 400,000 who have escaped detection...