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When the German chemist Emil Fischer presented his lock-and-key hypothesis in 1899, his analogy to describe the molecular relationship between enzymes and substrates quickly gained vast influence and provided future generations of scientists with a tool to investigate the relation between chemical structure and biological specificity.
Rebecca Mertens explains the appeal of the lock-and-key analogy by its role in model building and in the construction of long-term, cross-generational research programs. She argues that a crucial feature of these research programs, namely ascertaining the continuity of core ideas and concepts, is provided by a certain way of analogy-based modelling.
Frontmatter 1
Table of contents 5
Preface 7
1 The lock-and-key analogy and its influence on 20th century biochemistry 9
2 The lock-and-key analogy in Emil Fischer's program on sugar fermentation, 1890-1907 39
3 The making of the lock-and-key model of the antibody-antigen relationship, 1886-1930 77
4 Lock-and-key foundations for molecular biology: Linus Pauling and the Caltech group, 1930-1960 133
5 Lock-and-key-based modeling and its influence on the development of biochemical research programs 173
6 Concluding remarks on the construction of analogy-based research programs 199
Literature 205