Title:

Structure of Small Viruses

Creator:

Watson, James D., 1928-
Crick, Francis, 1916-2004

Date:

10 March 1956

Description:

Renewing their collaboration during Watson's return to the Cavendish laboratory in the fall of 1955, Watson and Crick in this article laid out a theory for explaining why all plant viruses whose structure had been studied up to that time were very similar in shape, either rod-shaped (cylindrical) or spherical. In developing their theory they once again benefited from their complementary expertise, namely Crick's extensive knowledge of X-ray crystallography and Watson's previous studies with tobacco mosaic virus and ribonucleic acid. They proposed that plant viruses consistently took one of two shapes because the two chemical components of which they were made up, ribonucleic acid surrounded by a large number of identical protein subunits, were assembled according to a general plan that was determined by "symmetry elements," structural requirements imposed by the shape of each protein subunit and by the angles of the bonds they formed with the ribonucleic acid core.

Periodical:

Nature

Publisher:

Nature Publishing Group

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of the Nature Publishing Group. and http://www.nature.com/nature/

Genre:

Articles

Format:

Text

Extent:

3 pages

Language:

English

Legacy Source Citation:

Periodical. Crick, Francis, and James D. Watson. "Structure of Small Viruses." Nature 177, 4506 (10 March 1956): 473-475. Article. 3 Images.. Nature

Legacy ID:

SCBBZN

NLM ID:

101584582X395

Profiles Collection:

The Francis Crick Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584582X395

Story Section:

Defining the Genetic Coding Problem, 1954-1957