So
far we have been looking at the pieces of a living organism. Now
it is time to put the pieces together and see where, and how, they
fit. This approach often is neglected in chemistry. An electronics
expert who analysed a transistor radio by pounding it to bits and
then running an elemental analysis on the wreckage would not get
high marks for insight; yet this is not too fanciful a parody of
attitudes in what can be called the "Waring blender" school
of biochemistry.
You can search carefully through one or two well-known
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biochemistry
textbooks and find hardly a hint of the structure of a living cell,
or a clue as to where the various biochemical reactions of a cell
take place. Yet one of the primary methods of control of reactions
in a cell is physical separation. If the elaborate structure of
a cell, shown above, is destroyed, then the intricate chemical edifice
collapses, too. In many ways, a chemist who looks only at the reactions
and not at the organization of cells is missing the point. As with
transistor radio fragments, he will see the metal but he will never
hear the music.
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