Discovery of virus by Martinus Beijerinck

Martinus Beijerinck (1851-1931), a Dutch botanist, is chiefly remembered for his research on the then unidentified agent that causes a sickness of tobacco plants called tobacco mosaic plants.

Tobacco mosaic disease causes discoloration in young tobacco plants, leading to a unique mosaic pattern on leaves and radically slowing the growth of the adult plants.

Beijerinck subjected the fluids of one of the diseased plants to intense filtration using a fine-grained porcelain filter. He demonstrated that even after such filtration the fluids retained their capacity to infect healthy plants.

This meant that whatever caused tobacco mosaic disease must be smaller than any kind of microbe known at that time.

Beijerinck called the mystery agent a virus the Latin word for poison. Beijerinck published his conclusions about tobacco mosaic virus in 1898.His research won Denmark’s Hansen Prize in 1922.

American chemist Wendell Meredith Stanley created pure crystals of tobacco mosaic virus from an infectious liquid solution in 1935. He found that the virus was not a living organism, since it could be crystallized like salt and yet remain infectious.

Scientists finally became able to see viruses in the 1930s, when electron microscopes were invented.
Discovery of virus by Martinus Beijerinck

History and discovery of viruses

Understanding of the viruses evolved in the late 1800 from their results of experiments done by a number of scientists.

In 1892, Iwanowski at St Petersburg discovered a new phenomenon by transmitting the tobacco mosaic disease to health plants by rubbing them with bacteria-free extracts of disease leaves.

Six years later Martinus Beljerinck (1898), a Dutch microbiologist, made the same observation and proposed that tobacco mosaic disease was caused by an entity different from bacteria and called it contagium vivum fluidum – a living infectious fluid that would multiply only in living plant cells, but could survive for long periods in a dried state.

Danish scientists Vilhelm Ellerman and Oluf Bang reported the cell free transmission of chicken leukemia in 1908, and in 1911 Peyton Rous discovered that solid tumors of chicken could be transmitted by cell free filtrates. These were the first indications that some viruses can cause cancer.

A major breakthrough came in 1935 when Stanley , an organic chemist succeeded in purifying TMV. This tobacco mosaic virus multiplies in the laves of tobacco plants and the cells become saturated with it.

The first pictures of viruses were seen using powerful electron microscope was only in the 1930s. It is only in the last 60 years that the most of the different kinds of virus have been discovered.

History and discovery of viruses

History Discovery of Virus

History Discovery of Virus
In 1958, two outbreaks of a pox-like disease occurred at an interval of 4 months in the State Serum Institute (Copenhagen, Denmark) among the Java macaques imported from Singapore for production of polio vaccine.

The outbreaks occurred on days 51 and 62 after the delivery.

The main symptom of this disease was a generalized rash (including the soles, palms, face and tail) that evolved rapidly from petechiae through maculopapular to pustlar stage. When the scabs had fallen off, scarring at remained at the sites of the lesions.

The disease developed without a pronounced disturbance of the animal general condition and affected 20-30% of the stock.

In ensuing years, monkeypox outbreaks among monkeys in captivity were observed in the USA, the Netherlands and France.

A new stage of research in this virus and the related pathology started in 1971 after reported its ability to cause a human disease clinically indistinguishable from small pox.

The comprehensive studies initiated after the discovery of this new disease were extremely important for the smallpox eradication program.

The point is that smallpox reported to WHO from the territories where its transmission had already been extinguished. The attempts to find out the source of infection failed.

All these issues became a matter of concern because they might indicate wither a low efficiency of the current anti-smallpox methodology or the existence of natural reservoir of the smallpox agent.

Precluding the doubts the discovery marked the beginning of research into this previously unknown human disease and stimulated further study of its etiological agent.
History Discovery of Virus