Physical Principles in the Construction of Regular Viruses
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
THE FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF VIRUS PARTICLES
There are two key facts about viruses from which all consideration of their structure and functional organization must proceed. The first is that the essential infective agent of all viruses is a high molecular weight nucleic acid component— either deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or ribonucleic acid (RNA). Second, the nucleic acid molecule is contained in a protective package which serves to transmit this infectious agent in a functionally intact state through space and time to a susceptible host.
The virus nucleic acid has the capacity of redirecting the synthetic machinery of its host cell to the production of more virus. It is becoming increasingly clear that this control over the cell metabolism can be exerted at a number of different stages of normal biosynthesis. The DNA of large bacteriophages, for example, may pertinently be regarded as a transmissible piece of bacterial chromosome (Luria, 1959). In...
