Abstract

All the viruses which have been isolated and studied have been found to contain nucleic acid. The solution of the problems of the isolation, structural relations, specificity and origin of nucleic acids are therefore of great importance in building the body of information necessary to explain the multiplication of a virus. Hence it is not surprising that the entrance of chemists into virology has led to advances in the study of nucleic acid. A few of these special contributions of virology to this field may be noted. The only relatively simple well-characterized proteins containing ribose nucleic acid (RNA) are the plant viruses (Bawden, 1943). The linkages of nucleic acid to protein in the plant viruses are not salt-like, in contrast to linkages in materials such as the nucleoprotamines (ibid). The ribose nucleic acid of tobacco mosaic virus was the first representative of the ribose-containing acids shown to have a