1957/01/01 by T. Dobzhansky, Th. Dobzhansky
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · #Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research #Bacteriophages and microbial interactions #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
paper · doi:10.1101/sqb.1957.022.01.036
The most basic known attribute of life is its ability to reproduce itself. Living matter constructs its own likenesses out of materials taken in from the environment. The units of self-reproduction are macromolecules, genes and plasmagenes. The evidence seems compelling that the genetic information is stored primarily in certain chemical components of the genes, namely in deoxyribonucleic and ribonucleic acids. Yet, excepting the simplest viruses, the self-replicating molecules do not occur singly. Instead, orderly arrays of many kinds of such molecules are compounded together and with by-products of their activities into organized units of several higher orders.