WHAT IS LIFE?

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 10267, 14 April 1926, Page 6

WHAT IS LIFE?

LIVING CELL MADE BY SCIENTISTS. NEW~YORK, Feb. 21. Another step towards solving the riddle “Wlmt is life?” has been made by Dr D. T. MacDougall, director of Botanical Research Department of the Carnegie Institute of Washington.

He has succeeded in producing a working model of a living cell (the unit of all living matter) by the use of chemicals similar to those occurring in living matter. Based upon the construction of ail egg, the cell lias an outer protective covering of thin cellulose. Through this a sugar solution containing chemicals absorbs sodium and potassium selectively in a manner similar to their absorption by plants. This is sufficient to cause growth. Here is where the artificial production’s limitations begin. It absorbs five times as much potassium as sodium, whereas a living cell absorbs 60 times as much. When it reaches what the scientist calls a “point of balance” its growth stops, and the intervention of man is required to upset the balance and start the cell going again! by the substitution of new solutions for the spent ones.

The living cell dees this automatically, impelled by some motive power that remains one of Nature’s secrets.

For experimental purposes the value of Dr MacDougall’s achievement can hardly lie overestimated.