An Historical Account of Protein Synthesis, with Current Overtones—A Personalized View
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
HISTORICAL SECTION
Introduction
A spectacular display of progress in knowledge of the mechanism of protein synthesis has taken place during the past decade, a logarithmic phase of growth which was preceded by an early inoculum of basic facts and an unspectacular lag phase. Just twenty years ago a summary of the extant state of information in this field presented at a Cold Spring Harbor Symposium (Zamecnik and Frantz, 1950) ended with the two line poem of Robert Frost—
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the secret sits in the middle and knows.”
These were in the pre-cell-free days, and it was still uncertain whether the Bergmann (1942) concept of a reversal of proteolysis or the Lipmann (1941) and Kalckar (1941) suggestion of a phosphorylated intermediate was the key to the direct path from free amino acid to completed protein. As important strands to be woven into the...
