Abstract
IT has been recognized for many years that in micro-organisms the formation of a large variety of enzymes can be specifically induced by exposing cells to compounds which are substrates for the enzymes in question. Recently, the same phenomenon has been demonstrated in a mammal1, and it will probably prove to be a general property of biological systems. Since a change of this sort can occur against a constant genetic background, it must be distinguished from a change in enzymatic constitution that is primarily mutational. In order to distinguish between these two phenomena, microbiologists have for many years referred to the former type of enzymic variation as ‘enzyme (or enzymatic) adaptation’. The term was, perhaps, an unfortunate choice2,3 since the word ‘adaptation’ has an old and well-established biological meaning. In biological parlance, ‘adaptation’ denotes the modifications of either structure or function which increase fitness; mechanism is unspecified, and in fact both phenotypic and genotypic changes are included thereunder. Logically, therefore, ‘enzymatic adaptation’ should denote a modification of enzymatic constitution which increases fitness, irrespective of whether it involves genotypic or phenotypic change, and microbiologists have in fact often used it in this broader sense4,5.
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References
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COHN, M., MONOD, J., POLLOCK, M. et al. Terminology of Enzyme Formation. Nature 172, 1096 (1953). https://doi.org/10.1038/1721096a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1721096a0
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