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DISCOVERY OF VIRUSES




Although plenty is understood about viruses, it's miles instructive and interesting to keep in mind how this know-how took place. It was best simply over 100 years ago on the give up of the nineteenth century that the germ concept of ailment turned into formulated, and pathologists were then confident that a causative microorganism might be discovered for each infectious disorder. Further, they believed that these dealers of sickness might be seen with the aid of a microscope, will be cultivated on a nutrient medium, and might be retained by way of filters. There had been, admittedly, some organisms that have been so fastidious that they couldn't be cultivated in vitro (actually, in glass, meaning within the take a look at tube), but the different criteria were happy. However, a few years later, in 1892, Dmitri Iwanowski became in a position to reveal that the causal agent of a mosaic disorder of tobacco plant life, manifesting as a discoloration of the leaf, handed thru a bacteria-evidence filter, and could not be visible or cultivated. Iwanowski was unimpressed with the aid of his discovery, however, Beijerinck repeated the experiments in 1898, and became convinced this represented a new shape of infectious agent which he termed contagium vivum fluidum, what we now recognize as an epidemic. In the identical year, Loeffler and Frosch came to an equal conclusion concerning the motive of foot-and-mouth disease. Furthermore, because foot-and-mouth ailment may be surpassed from animal to animal, with fantastic dilution at each passage, the causative agent had to be reproducing and for that reason couldn't be a bacterial toxin. Viruses of other animals had been soon determined. Ellerman and Bang stated the cellular-free transmission of bird leukemia in 1908, and in 1911 Rous observed that solid tumors of chickens may be transmitted by using cell-free filtrates. These have been the first warning signs that a few viruses can motive cancer.


Finally, bacterial viruses were determined. In 1915, Twort published an account of a glassy transformation of micrococci. He has been trying to culture the smallpox agent on agar plates however the handiest boom acquired was that of a few contaminating micrococci. Upon extended incubation, a number of the colonies took on a glassy appearance and, as soon as this happened, no bacteria might be subcultured from the affected colonies. If a number of the glassy cloth became added to ordinary colonies, they too took on a comparable appearance, despite the fact that the glassy fabric become first surpassed via very satisfactory filters. Among the recommendations that Twort put forward to explain the phenomenon became the lifestyles of a bacterial virus or the secretion by means of the microorganism of an enzyme that can lyse the producing cells. This concept of self-destruction by means of secreted enzymes became to show a controversial topic over the following decade. In 1917 d’Hérelle determined a similar phenomenon in dysentery bacilli. He observed clean spots on lawns of such cells and resolved to locate a cause of them. Upon noting the lysis of broth cultures of natural dysentery bacilli by filtered emulsions of feces, he at once found out he became dealing with a bacterial virus.


Since this virus turned incapable of multiplying except at the fee of living microorganisms, he called his virus a bacteriophage (literally a bacterium eater) or phage for short. Thus the primary definition of those new sellers, the viruses, changed into offered entirely in poor phrases: they couldn't be visible, could not be cultivated inside the absence of cells, and, most vital of all, have been now not retained through bacteria-proof filters.



References :

An introduction to modern virology by N. J. Dimmock, A. J. Easton and K. N. Leppard.

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