Abstract
This chapter discusses the inheritance of biochemical characteristics. It discusses the control of biochemical characteristics by genes. To exist as such, genes must be capable of inducing the formation of exact copies of themselves. In addition to catalyzing formation of more units like themselves, genes in general have heterocatalytic properties, that is, they catalyze the formation of other substances. In determining the specific chemical and perhaps physical configuration of protein molecules, genes directly determine enzyme specificities and control in a primary way enzymatic synthesis and other chemical reactions in the organism. The chapter also presents the biochemical differentiation of cells in a single organism. The process called determination by the embryologists causes one or other set of genes to act, the result being apparent in the differentiation of each class of cell, resulting from the influence of the cytoplasm on the activity of the genes or on the products of genes. The biochemical diversity of organisms is, hence, a diversity of cell aggregates that are themselves biochemically differentiated. The explanation of how cells coming from the same zygote are differentiated biochemically belongs to the domain of chemical embryology and chemical genetics and is still largely conjectural.
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