“Foreign biochemists who adhere to metaphysical idealist concepts, ascribe to mythical immutable genes the role of governing metabolic processes which, properly speaking, constitute the characteristic feature of life. Soviet biology has counterposed to these idealist concepts, a real, scientifically consistent materialist explanation of vital processes based on concrete experimental data. Let me cite as an example only one tendency in these investigations, namely, the study of the primary role played in all these complex manifestations of life by special substances called enzymes. Along with vitamins and hormones they constitute the group of compounds which direct all the changes lying at the basis of metabolism in the living organism. Enzymes are the real keys to life. All component substances of the organism—phosphorous compounds, fats, carbon-hydrates, etc. — would be inactive if they were not influenced by enzymes. Without the digestive enzymes, starch would be converted into sugar not in ten minutes, as it is in our body, but in scores of months. Without respiratory enzymes, the organism would be doomed to death from asphyxiation even in an atmosphere of pure oxygen.”