Abstract
Biological recognition in the sense of non-covalent union at some signi¬ficant level of affinity is as universal and necessary for every form of life as the conventional ability to replicate organic pattern. Enzyme action of all sorts and all the processes necessary for constructing and maintaining any form of living structure are necessarily based on mutual recognition of chemical configurations. One can hardly doubt that it was the special and perhaps unique capacity of the 20 biological amino acids to provide, from the three-dimensional arrangement of poly¬peptide chains, the capacity to recognize any and every molecular configuration within a certain size range that was responsible for their ‘choice’ as the primary building blocks of living material.
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Burnet, F.M. (1976). The Evolution of Receptors and Recognition in the Immune System. In: Cuatrecasas, P., Greaves, M.F. (eds) Receptors and Recognition. Series A, vol 1. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2993-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2993-8_2
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