Synthetic polynucleotides and the amino acid code.

These equations are plotted in Figure 2, with L as the abscissa. It is evident that for Case I, C7 is independent of L and varies as the square of At, while for the extreme Case II, or large At/T, C7 becomes nearly proportional to L. These relationships are the same as those proposed by Commoner et al. from a more qualitative analysis of the model. In the previous paper, Commoner et al. demonstrate that the relationship among the values of A, L, and At determined by experiments with TMV is in reasonably good agreement with equations (8) and (10) and leads to the calculation of the value of T for the growth of the TMV rod, 15 min. It is to be expected that better data will require refinements such as changes in the description of the increase of the pool activity P and perhaps the introduction of a growth rate which is a function of rod length. However, it is difficult to see how these possible changes could invalidate the main conclusion, i.e., TMV particles grow linearly with one process taking about 15-20 min per 3,000 A rod, and all other processes taking much less time. The model under discussion is unusual in that it relates isotope data descriptive of a chemical process, biosynthesis, to the geometry of the particle being synthesized and in particular to its length. If it proves possible to obtain corresponding geometrical data for other chemical and biochemical processes, the foregoing mathematical treatment may be applicable to them.