Molecular Biology May Solve Heredity Question

Press, Volume C, Issue 29501, 1 May 1961, Page 14

Molecular Biology May Solve Heredity Question

"The Press’- • Special Service

AUCKLAND, April 30 Studies in the newly named field of molecular biology may give the answer to the question of what is heredity, according to an American scientist in Auckland. He is Dr. S. G. Wildman, professor of botany at the University of California, at Los Angeles, who is at present a Fulbright scholar with the Australian division of plant industry in Canberra. His particular interest is In viruses—the tiny organisms on the tenuous boundary between the living and the dead, which cause many diseases in plants, animals and man.

Molecular biology, he explained, was the application of physical and chemical methods to explain the formation and function of the simplest "living chemicals,” such as viruses. "If we can’t understand the viruses, which consist almost completely of proteins with a sort of inner core of nucleic acids, we certainly can’t understand any more complex biological systems like bacteria. protozoa and so on,” he said.

"In the last few years advances in the study of viruses have been tremendous and we can be sure more great discoveries will come.

"The next great step will be when we can take the nucleic acids—which we believe cause the infectious properties of all viruses—apart and determine the arrange-

ment of the different constituents.

“There are only four different units in a nucleic acid, but in most viruses each acid is made up of a total of about 6000 units. The number of possible combinations is fantastic.”

Dr. Wildman, who has been visiting New Zealand at the invitation of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Fulbright Foundation, will return to Australia, today.