Jack: You’re talking about DNA as being structural, as well as having information?

Andrew: Absolutely. That is the information. The structure is the message, is what I believe.

Jack: With proteins I’ve already learned that that is the case. These things seem to be rather magical. Proteins often perform the role of messenger and here we have the messenger also being part of the cement. It’s part of the wall.

Andrew: Oh, absolutely.

Jack: Central dogma? Tell us what, what, what, what's the problem?

Andrew: First of all, there's, there's two things wrong with it. Central and dogma, all right. For many years it functioned -

Jack: Tell us what it is.

Andrew: Well, it, its an explanation chemical terms, of how heredity and how proteins are made and this sort of thing. How heredity works and proteins are made. The problem with it's not the center. If you take an egg for example; an egg is a protein for the most part and you can take the nucleus out where all the genes are, and the damn thing will develop for quite a time. How do you explain all those cell divisions without DNA? It's interacting with the proteins. "Without nucleic acid proteins have no past and without proteins nucleic acids have no future".

Jack: So what's the difference between them and the central dogma?

Andrew: Well the central dogma says that we can predict all things based on knowing the primary sequence of the nucleic acid.

Jack: And you say?

Andrew: No! Absolutely not! I gave you this example yesterday you’d never predict that a guy that didn’t have the elastin gene which is a structural gene for skin and for vessels and it makes them elastic would be a better musician. You know, you, can’t

Jack: Just explain that again, for the sake of readers . A person with a tight skin -

Andrew: Without elasticity - the skin has no elasticity. The elastin gene product.

Jack: That same gene which gives a person this condition, so that his or her skin has no elasticity. Just that one gene also gives the person an ability to play music really well.

Andrew: That's right. And they do other things too.

Jack: And all that comes from one single gene. The one gene has at least three complete, seemingly unrelated messages. So in fact, we’re really talking about surrealism here. What is life?

Andrew: What is life? Life is a very specific and peculiar organization. It’s extremely complex in its organization. Features we associate with the living processes include motility, propagation, homeostasis.

Jack: What is homeostasis?

Andrew: The ability to stay the way one is.

Jack: A cell is alive, a virus is not alive?

Andrew: That’s right.

Jack: A bacterium is alive?

Andrew: That’s right. And a piece of a cell is alive for a while, okay, even though it doesn’t have any nucleic acids in it.

Jack: Because it replicates?

Andrew: No! It doesn’t replicate. you see. It’s, that’s where the, the idea of all of these things being necessary characteristics or Aristotelian qualities the predicate of the sentence, "What is life?" Life is, motility and replication. The problem with that is that there are exceptions but the exceptions are either time-shifted or materially shifted in some way that would not constitute normal living processes. They occur in experimental dishes or whatever. I mean they don’t normally occur in the pageant of evolution. I mean you have intact cells in other words you don't cut em in half, okay. That contributes nothing to organic evolution to cut a cell in half. But you can’t say that, that piece of cytoplasm isn’t alive. After all it maintains homeostasis. You can in, in effect reduce life.

Jack: What will be the next thing which will make you feel, okay! That's an achievement! I wanted to do that, and I've done it!

Andrew: I want to cure melanoma. It's a cancer. It's a very deadly cancer. I've picked one cancer because cancers are all different and even the same cancer is different in different people. So, I've focussed now on melanoma for about 3 years and we've gotten some inroads in understanding how its organized, its structure if you will. So now we can begin perturbing it, or changing it in certain ways and asking if we can actually stop it. And that's what I came here to this meeting to discuss this ground state and how to articulate it. This is the ground state and from the computer people and the physicists here I've learned to call it, in their lingo.

Jack: Halt state.

Andrew: The halt state. I can make the analogy and its useful to make an analogy because when you make an analogy then you can make a physical model, as Watson and Crick did. I go back to the heroes. I always do.

Jack: They're your heroes?

Andrew: Absolutely.

Jack: Even though you contradict their -

Andrew: Yes.

Jack: their dogma?

Andrew: Yes. Yes. Because they made a model. And the model has been extremely useful in employing millions of people for many years.

Jack: What kind of a shot do you have at achieving your aim, curing melanoma, do you think?

Andrew: Better than average.

Jack: Better than average?

Andrew: Better than average, if I'm lucky and keep my head screwed on right and work very hard, have good help - as you know I've had the last few years. I've been fortunate the last few years. If I have those things then I think we can cure cancer, I really do.

Jack: Great.

Andrew: At least this cancer, all right.

Jack: Right! And, and that will help us to cure others?

Andrew: It invariably will, because, I'm not going to say the same method may be used, but some of the principles may be applicable.

Jack: I wish to inform,our reading public, that, Dr. Andy Mitosis — I beg your pardon silly mistake, Dr, Andrew Maniotis - as of this moment is lighting a cigarette. Thank you.

Andrew: [LAUGHTER]