Eduard Buchner Quote

The initiation of the fermentation process does not require so complicated an apparatus as is represented by the living cell. The agent responsible for the fermenting action of the press juice is rather to be regarded as a dissolved substance, doubtless a protein; this will be denoted zymase.

'Gährung ohne Hefezellen', Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft, 1897, 30, 119–20. Trans. in Joseph S. Fruton, Proteins, Enzymes, Genes: The Interplay of Chemistry and Biology (1999)