Abstract
Novel electron microscopical techniques have been applied to an analysis of the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus. A photographic linear integrating apparatus used in conjunction with the 11.94 Å crystal lattice of platinum phthalocyanine permits both the visualisation of structures obscured by “noise” and also very precise measurement of their periodicities. By these methods it has been found that the present views on the size and proportions of the virus are incorrect, because the isolated rods shrink on drying for electron microscopy. The dry rods are left-handed helices, having 162 turns in 2890 Å. The protein subunits number 2650. There are 7900 nucleotides in the nucleic acid, accounting for 5.1% of the weight of the particles, which is 49.8 million avograms. The precision of these estimates is assessed at about ±2%.
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