Science Of Virology Research Articles

A Tribute to Prof. Kameshwar S. Bhargava: An Indian Plant Virologist (1918–2010)

Prof. Kameshwar Sahai Bhargava was born in Rewari, Haryana in the family of Shri Janki Prasad Bhargava and Smt. Gayatri Devi. Both father and mother were highly religious, strict disciplinarians and much respected selfless social workers of the area. This influenced the childhood and formative years of Prof. Bhargava. His early education was at Rewari and St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi. There after he joined University of Allahabad and graduated in 1937, earned M.Sc. (Botany) in 1939 and D.Phil. (Botany) in 1943. Prof. Bhargava was all through a meritorious student. He was awarded Empress Victoria Readership in 1940 for doing research work at University of Allahabad; S. A. Hill Memorial Award for best research work in the Faculty of Science and E. G. Hill Memorial Award for best research work in the University. After serving for brief period at the University of Allahabad and Birla College, Pilani, Prof. Bhargava proceeded to England in 1945 on Central Government Overseas Scholarship, where he worked on properties of four strains of Cucumber mosaic virus and earned Ph.D. degree of the University of London in 1948. Thereafter he returned to India and served at the University of Allahabad, Banaras Hindu University and as Professor of Botany and Vice Principal at DSB Govt. College, Nainital. In 1958, University of Gorakhpur invited him as founder Professor and Head, Department of Botany. There he laid strong foundation of the Dept. of Botany and developed premier center of research in Plant Virology. Prof. Bhargava served this University till 1983 at positions of Dean, Faculty of Science; Dean, Faculty of Agriculture; Director, College Development Council; Pro Vice Chancellor and Vice Chancellor. He guided several Ph.D. students and published more than 150 research papers. He was a widely traveled person. His pioneer works on temperate fruits, ornamentals, vegetables and sugarcane were widely acknowledged. Prof. Bhargava strived hard to strengthen teaching program in Virology in India. In recognition of his meritorious services, he was elected Fellow of Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Science, India, and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India. He was also Fellow of Indian Botanical Society, Indian Phytopathological Society and Indian Virological Society. Prof. Bhargava was elected President of Indian Botanical Society, Indian Phytopathological Society and Indian Virological Society. He served on various national and international committees. In his honor Indian Virological Society instituted “Prof. Kameshwar Sahai Bhargava Award” in 2007 which is annually presented to an outstanding scientist in the field of Virology. In his honor University of Gorakhpur has also instituted in 2012 “Prof. K. S. Bhargava Memorial Lecture” which will be delivered each year by an eminent scientist. After establishing research work in Plant Virology in India, Prof. Bhargava for the first time studied and identified three virus diseases of temperate fruits viz. plum line pattern on plums, mosaic diseases on peach and mosaic disease on apple and identified four viral diseases on ornamentals viz. mosaic diseases of Mirabilis, petunias, garden nasturtium and rose in the country. Further to this he concentrated on virus diseases of cucurbits and reported Watermelon mosaic virus and Cucumber mosaic virus. In addition to cucurbits he identified mosaic and ring spot viral diseases on papaya and mosaic disease on tree tomato (Cyphomandra betacea) and Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon). He for the first time used sugar cane differentials in India and identified five strains of Sugarcane mosaic virus. Prof. Bhargava also for the first time reported association of mycoplasma like bodies (phytoplasma) with grassy shoot diseases of sugar cane. In epidemiological studies, he reported perpetuation of Watermelon mosaic virus disease and Sugarcane mosaic virus disease in nature. He used various novel methods for the management of viral diseases which included antiviral activity of botanicals including pteridophytes, oil spray and inhibitory property of milk. He partially identified virus inhibitor from the leaf extract of fern (Ampelopteris prolifera). With his long experience of teaching and research in Plant Virology he helped to strengthen science of Plant Virology in particular and science of Virology in general in India. After the demise of his wife Smt. Shakuntala Devi he moved to USA and lived with his son Shri Bharat Bhargava. Till to the last day he was very active in academics. Prof. Bhargava is survived by his son and daughter in-law, two daughters and son in-laws, and grand and great grand children. He will be fondly remembered as a committed scientist and teacher, a strict disciplinarian, an able administrator, for simplicity, punctuality, easy accessibility and qualities of head and heart. He has left behind a rich legacy of intellectual thought, inquiry and study.

David M Oshinsky, Polio: an American story, New York, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. viii, 342, illus., £18.99, $30.00 (hardback 0-19-515294-8).

Born in 1934, my mother grew up afraid of rivers, lakes, and local swimming holes. Water was the conduit of polio, she was told by her own mother, and was to be avoided, especially in the hot summer months. Decades later, as a pre-schooler at my first swimming lesson, I still remember my mother reassuring me that I would not be a hydrophobe like herself, for we lived in a post-polio age. How such a drastic change in attitude occurred in only one generation is explained in David M Oshinsky's Polio: an American story. While the book is advertised as covering the entire twentieth century, Oshinsky focuses primarily on the middle decades, when the race to find a vaccine was fierce. He begins with a somewhat superficial overview of the history of polio from Galen to Warm Springs, Georgia. This is a large swath of time, the later portion of which has already been covered in great detail by Naomi Rogers in Dirt and disease: polio before FDR (1992). The author hits his stride, however, a third of the way through the book, when he unpacks the complicated interrelationship between private fundraising campaigns (spearheaded, in the case of polio, by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, or NFIP), the new post-war media machine, bi-partisan politics, and the science of virology. We learn why Jonas Salk became a household name in the United States, while Albert Sabin—a leading international figure in polio research—did not. Oshinsky takes us from the optimism of April 1955, when newspapers ran headlines proclaiming that “Polio is Conquered”, to the sudden wave of scepticism that hit the country later that same year after dozens of children who received vaccines from Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley, California, contracted the disease and were left paralysed. By ending his book with a discussion of the first bouts of Post-Polio Syndrome in the 1980s, Oshinsky indicates that the history of polio is not a simple story of medical triumph but one marked by numerous setbacks and complications. There are many thematic threads to this book that will be of interest to medical historians. First, historians of medical ethics and human experimentation will find Oshinsky's discussion of the moral quandary of using children (institutionalized and not) as research subjects in the early live-virus vaccine trials compelling and rich. And those who study the history of media and medicine will find Oshinsky's story noteworthy, since he claims that the NFIP “created the concept of philanthropy as consumerism” (p. 5). For historians interested in women scientists, disability studies, or the patient perspective, Oshinsky has only a few brief sentences to offer. He leaves his reader wanting to know more about the women scientists who were essential to the development of the vaccine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as Dorothy Horstmann—a Yale investigator who was the first to discover the “viremic phase” of polio, the very brief period of time when vaccination is effective—and Isabel Morgan—a Johns Hopkins researcher who, Oshinsky speculates, could “have beaten Salk to the polio vaccine” if she had been willing to use children as experimental subjects and avoided marriage at the age of thirty-eight (p. 132). Oshinsky rarely discusses polio victims themselves, except for a brief mention of teenager Bill Kirkpatrick, Salk's “Subject No. 1”. In today's literature, polio is a topic of both disease and disability history—one wonders why Oshinsky did not draw upon the work of Daniel J Wilson better to address the view of those on the ground who personally experienced what it meant to have polio. Nevertheless, Oshinsky has written a highly readable history about the leaders behind America's mid-century campaign to eradicate polio. Albert Sabin, Jonas Salk, Basil O'Connor (director of the NFIP) and FDR “represent[ed] the public face of polio—the courageous victim, the devoted foundation leader, [and] the brilliant researchers with their lifesaving vaccines” (p. 112). It is a top-heavy story, but one of extreme importance to understanding how laboratory science operates in a consumer-conscious, media-saturated, risk-adverse society.

Plant Viruses. Invaders of Cells and Pirates of Cellular Pathways

Plant viruses, discovered over a century ago when the science of virology was born (for review, see [Creager, 2002][1]), are obligate parasites on their hosts. Through their life cycle, from virus accumulation to intracellular, local, and systemic movement, viruses utilize plant proteins, normally

Advances in Understanding Plant Viruses and Virus Diseases.

▪ Abstract Plant viruses have had an impact on the science of virology and on plant pathology ever since the virus concept was discovered with Tobacco mosaic virus at the end of the nineteenth century. In this review, we highlight those discoveries. We have divided plant virus research into a "Classical Discovery Period" from 1883-1951 in which the findings were very descriptive; an "Early Molecular Era" from 1952 to about 1983, in which information was developed that described further properties of the viruses, aided by the development of a number of salient techniques; and the "Recent Period" from 1983 to the present, when techniques have been developed to modify plant virus genomes, to detect nonstructural gene products, to determine the functions of viral gene products, and to transform plants to elicit novel forms of resistance to viral diseases. In this period, plant virology has played a significant role in formulating an understanding of the mechanisms of gene silencing and recombination, plasmodesmatal function, systemic acquired resistance, and in developing methods for pathogen detection. We also attempt to predict the direction plant virology will take in the future.

VACCINATION AGAINST VIRUS DISEASES

Great advances in the science of virology have raised the reasonable hope that all serious virus diseases which affect large portions of mankind will eventually be brought under control by the use of virus vaccines. It has been apparent for some time to virologists that a number of specific problems must be solved before the safest and most effective method of vaccination against each virus disease can be determined. This is readily understood with vaccines in the field trial stage, such as measles virus vaccine. However, to a lesser extent the statement is true even for virus vaccines of proven efficiency, such as the poliomyelitis and influenza virus vaccines.