Triumph of Experimental Technique over the Secretiveness of Nature
from Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure 1965
| This Atlas voluminously illustrates
the triumph of experimental technique over the secretiveness of nature.
Perhaps nowhere has the power of the scientific method been more brilliantly
demonstrated than in the development of procedures for the study of the chemistry
of life. As recently as twenty years ago, it was customary for biologists
to have a hopeless attitude about biochemistry. Some details might be
elicited, perhaps, but living things were thought to be so very complex and
intricate that there surely was no hope of fully “understanding” them in
all their chemical detail. Who, if he really comprehended the difficulty
of the problem, would dare to think of man’s ever knowing the detailed structure
of a protein, for example, much less be able to synthesize it? Who would
ever understand the mechanism of an enzyme as clearly as a chemist understands
the details of an inorganic reaction? How could we ever hope to know
the atomic details of a protein crystal? Today some of these ambitions have already been attained, and the others no longer seem out of reach. We now rationally hope to be able to discover and understand the finest chemical details of living processes. These accomplishments have been made possible by the combined effect of several new approaches. |
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