Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Socieete de Chimie Physique at Orleans, France, September 19-22, 1972

In order to give, in terms of physical chemistry, an explanation of the so specific behavior of living systems it is necessary, if not sufficient, to analyse the mechanisms which are acting inside the living cell. These mecanisms involve the actions of fundamental macromolecules, the proteins and the nucleic acids, which are universal constituents of living matter. The structure of these chain molecules is described and it is shown that they behave like small molecular machines, which can play the role of constituents in a cybernetic assembly. Despite the progress of our knowledge in this...