Centenary of the Birth of Modern Biochemistry 1

1897 was a big year for science. J. J. Thomson discovered the electron, which, along with other momentous advances around that time ushered in the golden half-century of modern physics. It was in 1897, too, that Eduard Buchner accidentally observed that yeast juice can convert sucrose to ethanol. This discovery disposed of a firm belief that alcoholic fermentation is a vital operation of an intact cell; it was the origin of modern biochemistry. Forty years of enzyme fractionation resolved this “zymase” activity into a dozen discrete reactions. With the reconstitution of alcoholic fermentation, a phenomenon that had baffled scientists for centuries was explained in molecular terms, and the stage was set for the revolutionary advances of biomedical science in the second half of our century. During the course of resolving the alcoholic fermentation in yeast juice, glycolysis by a muscle extract was also resolved into its molecular components and, astonishingly, proved to be virtually identical to the yeast pathway. Conservation of mechanisms and molecules for a billion or more years in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals has since been observed in a large number of bioenergetic and biosynthetic pathways. Universality of biochemistry represents one of the great revelations of our century. Because attention to enzymology and biochemistry has diminished in recent decades by the emergence of molecular and cellular biology, it is appropriate to be reminded of what these