Abstract
IT has been known since 1903, when Iwanowski's paper on tobacco mosaic appeared, that virus disease in plants is frequently accompanied by the appearance within the cells of abnormal inclusions bearing some resemblance to amœbæ. These inclusions, or ‘X-bodies’, are well-defined masses of granular or finely reticulate material not unlike protoplasm, typically rounded or roughly spherical in shape, though often elongated, and usually containing in their substance vacuoles, which vary in number from one to as many as ten or eleven. The resemblance to amb is heightened by the not infrequent apearance of lateral projections suggesting pseudopodia, and the occurrence of bodies constricted in such a fashion as to suggest fission has led several observers to believe that these X-bodies are in fact living organisms or plasmodial colonies of organisms, which represent some stage in the life-history of the virus parasite.
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SHEFFIELD, F., SMITH, J. Intracellular Bodies in Plant Virus Diseases. Nature 125, 200 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125200a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125200a0
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