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ACTH, expensively extracted from the pituitary glands of cattle, also helps many a disease, such as arthritis, but the magic compound, unfortunately, is anything but simple. It is a polypeptide, a large molecule (molecular weight 4,500) made up of many amino-acid units arranged in a long chain. Chemists have puzzled over its structure for years, but have learned only bits and scraps about it. Polypeptides (related to proteins) are baffling things to deal with...
Last week the University of California announced that a team led by China-born Dr. C. H. Li has determined the complete molecular structure of ACTH. It turns out to be a straight chain of 39 amino acids arranged in a definite order. After satisfying themselves about the position of each link in the chain, Dr. Li and his teammates broke the chain in two, separating 28 of the links from the remaining eleven. The larger section proved to have all the desirable biological effects of the whole natural molecule. Better still, it lacks certain bad side effects...
Citation: "Examining red bread mold, in collaboration with Dr. E. L. Tatum, he discovered that the genes control the synthesis of vitamins and amino acids in the living cell, and thus he made possible further discoveries not only of the nature of the genes but of principles in biochemistry and bacteriology...
...Nobel Prize for discovering the positron. Meanwhile, Caltech biologists have been probing their own areas of the invisible. Geneticist Alfred H. Sturtevant described the linear order of genes; Calvin B. Bridges provided proof for the chromosome theory of heredity. In determining that genes control the synthesis of vitamins and amino acids, George Beadle discovered the bread mold, Neurospora, as an effective research tool. This has sped the progress of genetics a hundredfold, was partly responsible for the successful increased production of penicillin...
...favorite beverage is a "food" and full of health-giving nutrients found academically respectable confirmation in a book by German Physiologist Wilhelm Stepp. A quart of beer from his area, said Dr. Stepp, contains at least a man's daily requirements of several B vitamins, plus phosphorus and amino acids. Dr. Stepp practices in Munich...