Specific and General Aspects of the Development of Enzymes and Metabolic Pathways

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Abstract
It is fully appreciated that recent advances in molecular biology have yielded by now a general model of the biologically pivotal protein-synthesizing system and that this model provides a necessary, logically coherent, and methodologically fruitful basis of reference for the study of enzyme development. At the same time it has become possible to relate the specific mechanisms which control enzyme development to the general model of protein synthesis using the same logically consistent molecular concepts. An example is the analysis of developmental effects of hormones. This advance definitely removes the observations of specific developmental processes, especially of enzyme development, from the category of inventorial descriptive data and provides a basis for explanation. Under these circumstances the absence of a "general theory" of differentiation may be of less importance and the complete analysis of the molecular mechanisms of specific developmental processes a worthwhile end in itself. This is borne out by the trends in the analysis of specific functions of mature tissues where an explanation is sought by the establishment of molecular mechanisms. It can be proposed that such a reconciliation of specificity and generality, the more nearly equal importance and interest attached to both, is perhaps the outstanding feature of the study of development and perhaps also of other areas of biology. It is in this sense that the work now leading toward an analysis of the development of cell specificity is losing its intractable quality and appears as a challenging and attractive area of study.