Word: hofmann
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...times her figures seem to be little more than crude painted cutouts; but their oddball incompleteness and the way painted surfaces suddenly and spontaneously emerge into sculpted forms are meticulously planned. Three dimensions sink into two; two grow into three in a sort of Marisol version of Hans Hofmann's theory of push-and-pull. Marisol's greatest ally is the power of free association. A pair of hands suggests arms that do not exist; the imaginary arms, in turn, suggest a body...
Marisol Escobar-or Marisol, as she is known professionally-studied under the noted abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann, and, she says dryly, "I painted like a Hofmann student." But though she learned much from her master, he was quickly supplanted by a series of happenstance influences that sent Marisol off on a strange and appealing tangent of her own. In a friend's house, for instance, she saw some small Mexican boxes filled with hand-carved painted figures, and she was enchanted. In another house, she was drawn to an old-fashioned coffee grinder that had the shape...
...Hofmann patiently built a copy of the smaller fragment. After he had stuck 13 of the acids together, he joined his synthetic segment to the 104-acid remainder of natural ribonuclease. The reconstituted enzyme proved to have 70% of the activity of the natural substance. Apparently the seven amino acids, Nos. 14 to 20, that had been left out are like the chip collector on a lathe-useful but not essential...
...Hofmann then synthesized an eleven-acid segment and joined it with the rest of the enzyme. This substance proved wholly inert. Apparently amino acids Nos. 12 and 13 that he had just eliminated are at the "active site" of the enzyme, like the cutting tool of a lathe...
There is nothing special about either of these two acids; they are common in most living organisms. So Dr. Hofmann and a host of colleagues are now trying to discover why they give the coils and folds of the ribonuclease chain the qualities of an enzyme. A solution to that problem will be a solution to one of the most intriguing mysteries in the study of life...