Abstract
BECAUSE of their crystallinity, a great deal is known about the ultimate chemical structure of the plant viruses, whereas little or no corresponding information is available for the animal viruses. Efforts to obtain X-ray diffraction patterns have not been successful, and attention has been turned in recent years towards the electron microscope as the tool most likely to solve the problem. For obvious reasons attention in the first instance has been directed to the larger animal viruses, but with the exceptions of nuclei-like bodies in the Rickettsise1 and less definite internal bodies in the pox group2,3, this technique has also proved disappointing. It is clear on the practical side that the size and density of the infective particles is such that 100-kV. electrons can only just penetrate them, and any internal differences in electron density which may exist must be of a low order—probably less than 20 per cent.
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DAWSON, I., McFARLANE, A. Structure of an Animal Virus. Nature 161, 464–466 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161464a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161464a0
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