Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has seen yet; but to think what nobody has thought yet, about what everybody sees.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The use of radioactive isotopes in the study of life processes is of importance in understanding them. With the use of autoradiographic and radiochemical techniques, it is possible to obtain valuable information regarding the life of cells and the intimate mechanisms by which life processes determine the fate of the entire organism.

Our knowledge of the cell cycle and of the gene-action system has been useful in determining how organisms grow and how cancer cells behave. It has been determined that certain normal adult cells divide more frequently than some cancer cells and that the growth of cancers depends not so much on the speed of cellular proliferation as on the number of cells actually dividing.

Knowledge of the cell cycle has also brought new insight to the control of cell division, as in studies related to the therapy of cancer. The most important problem now is, not the control of cell division, but the control of the synthesis of DNA.

Our information on the gene-action system provides broad new opportunity for the investigation of many life processes. Hormone action, processes by which the body develops immunity to disease, and even cell division itself are apparently regulated through the gene-action system. This, in turn, offers possibilities for investigations meant to control these processes.

It is difficult to chart the future course of modern molecular biology, but it is not difficult to predict that the next few years will bring to biology the same kind of sweeping advances that revolutionized physics a few decades ago. The DNA molecule has been called the atom of life. When we have harnessed it, the harnessing of the uranium atom will seem, in comparison, a result of scientific adolescence. When man has mastered the genetic code, he’ll hold a vast power in his hands—power over the nature of coming generations.