systemic Relating to or affecting the whole body.
systemic acquired resistance (SAR) A defensive
response in infected plants characterized by an activa-
tion of a number of defense mechanisms. The mecha-
nisms are activated at the site where the pathogen
attacks and in tissues untouched by the pathogen.
SAR provides resistance against a host of organisms
such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Also called
induced resistance.
systole Contraction of the heart; the period when
ventricles contract, pushing blood from the left ventri-
cle into the aorta and from the right ventricle into the
pulmonary artery. Systolic pressure is when the blood
pressure is measured during contraction of the heart. In
blood pressure readings, it is normally the higher of the
two measurements.
Szent-Györgyi, Albert von (1893–1986) Hungarian
Biochemist Albert von Szent-Györgyi was born in
Budapest on September 16, 1893, to Nicolaus von
Szent-Györgyi, and Josefine, whose father, Joseph
Lenhossék, and brother Michael were both professors
of anatomy in the University of Budapest.
He took his medical degree at the University of Sci-
ences in Budapest in 1917, and in 1920 became an
assistant at the University Institute of Pharmacology in
Leiden. From 1922 to 1926, he worked with H. J.
Hamburger at the Physiology Institute, Groningen,
Netherlands. In 1927, he went to Cambridge as a
Rockefeller fellow, working under F. G. HOPKINS, and
spent one year at the Mayo Foundation, Rochester,
Minnesota, before returning to Cambridge. In 1930 he
became chair of medical chemistry at the University of
Szeged, and five years later he also was chair in organic
chemistry. At the end of World War II, he was chair of
medical chemistry at Budapest.
Szent-Györgyi’s early researches concerned the
chemistry of cell respiration. He pioneered the study of
biological oxidation mechanisms and proved that hex-
uronic acid, which he isolated and renamed ascorbic
acid, was identical to vitamin C and that it could be
extracted from paprika. He won the 1937 Nobel Prize
in physiology or medicine for his discoveries, especially
of vitamin C.
In the late 1930s his work on muscle research
quickly led him to discover the proteins actin and
myosin and their complex. This led to the foundation
of muscle research in the following decades. He also
worked on cancer research in his later years. In 1947,
he moved to the United States, where he became direc-
tor of research, Institute of Muscle Research, Woods
Hole, Massachusetts.
His publications include Oxidation, Fermentation,
Vitamins, Health and Disease(1939), Muscular Con-
traction(1947), The Nature of Life(1947), Contrac-
tion in Body and Heart Muscle(1953), Bioenergetics
(1957), and The Crazy Apein 1970, which was a com-
mentary on science and the future of the human race.
He died on October 22, 1986.320 systemic