Abstract
Dawson and McFarlane1 reported that the pepsin-digested elementary body of vaccinia reveals a nucleus-like central body surrounded by a membrane. This phenomenon was confirmed by subsequent papers for vaccinia2,3 and other viruses of the pox group—fowl pox3,4, neurovaccinia3, ectromelia3 and myxoma3,5. Pepsin digestion does not interfere with the deoxyribonucleic acid content of the virus, as shown by an earlier report6. In analogy to cells of higher organisms and bacteria, the structure containing deoxyribonucleic acid had to be looked for in the central body. Therefore, we attempted to digest specifically the central body by pure enzymes, as we did with the nuclei of rod-shaped and coccoid bacteria (Escherichia coli 7 and Neisseria sicca 8).
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References
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PETERS, D., STOECKENIUS, W. Structural Analogies of Pox Viruses and Bacteria. Nature 174, 224 (1954). https://doi.org/10.1038/174224a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/174224a0
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