Tobacco Mosaic Virus: The Beginning of Plant Virology

病毒所的猪

IntroductionFor the past century, plant virology and the American Phytopathological Society have a deeply intertwined history. As the Society emerged as a distinct entity in the first decade of the 20th century, viruses were also making their mark as newly described and discovered agents of disease. Interestingly, Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and its economic hosts in the Solanaceae, such as tobacco and tomato, also find their origins in the Americas.
What follows is a brief review of the origins of our understanding of “the nature of the virus,” deciphering the basis of host-pathogen interaction, and vignettes of the early TMV workers who developed many of the tools and techniques that have become part of the definition of what it is “to be” a virologist or “to do” virology. As plant molecular virology has its origins in the early 20th century, first from the early descriptive work of viruses diseases (1900-1935), followed by the biochemical, the genetics, and biophysical work (1935-1960), the molecular biology (1960-1980), and our current era of transgenic technology, functional genetics of plant viruses, and using viruses as molecular tools, it is useful to develop a contextual understanding of how we came to work with TMV.


BY Karen-Beth G. Scholthof,
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
email: kbgs@tamu.edu
Scholthof, K-B. G. 2008. Tobacco Mosaic Virus: The Beginning of Plant Pathology. Online. APSnet Features. doi: 10.1094/APSnetFeatures-2008-0408

详细的请见：http://www.apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/pages/tmv.aspx