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Science and Image

Nature 396, 123 (12 November 1998) | doi:10.1038/24062

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Visible viruses

Martin Kemp1

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The structure of viruses was for a long time an enigma. It took an amalgam of techniques, especially the rapidly burgeoning field of electron microscopy, to reveal the quasi-symmetrical nature of viral architecture.

The exciting disclosure of the polyhedral structure of viruses during the late 1950s and early 1960s presents a perfect example of collaborative interaction between different methods of experimentation, observation, analysis and visualization, at a stage when no one method could alone deliver all the answers, because each was operating at the very margins of credibility given the immense problems of concentrating and purifying viruses. Crude X-ray diffraction, chemical analysis and shadow electron microscopy, especially with plant viruses, had begun to hint at the fascinating structures that might be involved in viral architecture, but direct viewing remained frustratingly out of reach.