Abstract
ONE of the greatest services which a group of investigators can give to the larger scientific public is the compilation of a sound and detailed resum6 of their own particular field of research. F. M. Burnet, E. V. Keogh and Dora Lush have done this for the immunological reactions of the filterable viruses (Aus. J. Exp. Biol. and Med. Sci., 15, Pt. 3 (supplement), pp. 231-368 ; 1937: also published separately, price 10s. Od.from the Librarian, Univ. of Adelaide South Australia, or Messrs. H. K.Lewis and Co., Ltd., 136 Gower Street, London, W.C.I). The specialist contribution of these workers lies mainly in their quantitative study of the immunity reactions of numerous animal viruses, using a method which produces discrete pock marks upon the chorioallantoic membrane of a developing egg. Their present monograph contains a short reference to the serology of plant viruses, but is otherwise devoted in detail to those which attack bacteria and mammalian animals. Chapter I contains a useful comparison of animal viruses with bacteriophages. The latter can be regarded as virus diseases of bacteria, and have particle-sizes commensurate with the small size of their hosts. They range from 10 to 65 rnfji in diameter, where animal viruses vary between 10 and 300 mμ. Both are composed mainly of nucleoprotein, with traces of ether-extractable substances and salts, whilst carbohydrates are lost during washing.
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Immunological Reactions of the Filterable Viruses. Nature 141, 983 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141983b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141983b0