Living Crystals?

Between the crystal (highest form of inorganic matter) and a unicellular bit of protoplasm (lowest form of living matter) has been a gap which scientists have never been able to span. In a recent issue of Nature, British scientific weekly, Dr. F. Rinne, University of Freiburg, Germany, suggested similarities between a crystal and a simple sperm cell which may be the means of drawing living and nonliving matter together. He pointed out that a chief characteristic of liquid crystals* is the so-called "straight-stretch" type of molecule which composes it. Protein molecules of sperm cells are also of the "straight stretch" type. In addition to this structural likeness, there is a likeness of optical behavior. Like crystals, sperm cells break in two the light which passes through them, bending each ray so that two points of light emerge where one entered. This property is noted in living cells and in preserved specimens.

Since the evolutionary theory has influenced all branches of science, scientists have attempted to unite everything in a pattern of continuous development. As Charles Darwin and his contemporaries removed the definite boundaries between man and the rest of the animal kingdom, so scientists have united animal life and plant life. Upon the animal-plant dividing line, organisms were discovered which never have been definitely classified, showing relationship to the simplest animal and yet having the chlorophyll (the green pigment in plants which in the presence of sunlight is responsible for photosynthesis, the union of carbon dioxide and water to form carbohydrates, plant food) of the plant. George Washington Crile, Cleveland bio-electrician (author: A Bipolar Theory of Living Processes), has further united the two by emphasizing the irritability of plant life, its similarity to the nervous system of the animal.

* A liquid crystal is any liquid substance possessing the optical properties of a crystal.

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