When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 1 - Waldorf Research Institute

messengers.” 3 Hormones are a particular class of information-carrying
proteins for specific purposes. The enzymes which regulate DNA and RNA
are another class of such proteins with a different information content. But
even in genetics itself proteins are now being called information carriers
for nucleic acids in the way meant here. For example one calls those
enzymes which join transfer-RNA with specific amino acids, aminoacyl-t-
RNA synthetases. Each of these synthetases can “identify” the anticodon
of t-RNA and one of the 20 amino acids. 11 This is possible because these
syn thetases contain a definite, but not yet decoded sequence of amino acids
in a particular spatial arrangement, which enters into a regular relation with
the anticodon mentioned and with an amino acid. Therefore one now calls
this amino acid structure of synthetase a “code,” that is, an information
carrier. 30
Note well: In DNA the code is always a nucleotide sequence, and this
carries information for an amino acid. Now in this synthetase the code is an
amino acid arrangement, and this carries information for a tri-nucleotide.
(And incidentally also for amino acids, which would be interesting to
investigate). In other words, proteins are just as much information carriers
for nucleic acids as nucleic acids are information carriers for proteins.
7. This becomes especially clear if one considers the regulation of
genes where DNA has to acquire a primary structure which never existed
in the organism before and which therefore is not inherited, and it is not
made after a model, as in gene replication. In this case DNA is made into
a carrier for a specific, entirely new unit of information. I’m referring to
the now famous recombination of genes which has been detected in
bacteria since about 1970, 1 and in the lymphocytes of higher organisms in
immunoglobulin synthesis since 1980, 29 in the field of molecular biology.
We know that scientists in Basel have accomplished great things in this
field. Prof. Arber’s discovery and use of bacterial restriction enzymes was of
primary importance for all of these research areas, and Tonegawa did a lot
of his work on immunoglobulin gene recombination here in Basel. Almost
everyone knows that this work was recognized with two Nobel prizes in 1978
and 1987.
The main features of this gene recombination are so important that I’d
like to spend a little time on them. Through its lymphocytes the organism
continually produces specific antibodies for all kinds of foreign substances.
Now and then new substances appear for which the organism has to create
specific antibodies. Among these substances are ones which never existed
before, because they were synthesized by our pharmaceutical manufac turers
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