Jakarta –
Tobacco mosaic virus or the tobacco mosaic virus is the first virus in the world discovered by scientists. This virus has existed for billions of years, but was only described scientifically towards the end of the 19th century. It will take decades of hard work to truly identify these ‘invisible’ agents that baffle scientists.
The discovery of this virus began in 1876 when Adolf Mayer, an agricultural chemist in Germany, described a strange mottled disease that attacked tobacco plants. Mayer believes the disease is caused by bacteria or fungus. However, tests and microscopic examination failed to find any organisms.
Then, a breakthrough occurred in 1892 in the hands of a botanist in Russia, Dmitri Ivanovsky. He discovered the sap of infected plants remained infectious after passing through bacteria-retaining filters. At that moment, Ivanovsky knew he had discovered something new.
In 1898, a microbiologist in the Netherlands, Martinus Beijerinck, independently replicated Ivanovsky’s experiments and provided a more robust interpretation. Beijerinck argued that Ivanovsky’s experiments showed that tobacco mosaic disease was not caused by bacteria, but rather something he called contagium vivum fluidum or infectious living fluid.
Several other disease-causing pathogens were later found to pass through bacteria-retaining filters, including foot-and-mouth disease, rabbit myxomatosis, African horse sickness, and avian plague. However, the exact nature of the virus remains unclear.
Furthermore, the identification of the cause of yellow fever was an important moment in the history of virology. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, US soldiers were struck by yellow fever when they arrived on the coast of Cuba.
Through the work of Walter Reed, James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte, and Jesse William Lazear, it was proven that this disease could be transmitted through filtered blood serum from infected patients. This discovery made yellow fever the first infectious disease in humans caused by a virus.
In 1931, with the invention of the electron microscope, scientists were able to see viruses. Once again, tobacco mosaic virus has the honor of being the first virus captured in an image.
Another major moment occurred in the 1950s with the emergence of the work of Rosalind Franklin. He used X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus as a single-stranded RNA molecule bounded by a protein membrane.
His other work helped prove that DNA is a molecule consisting of two chains, leading to the famous discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
More than a century after their discovery, viruses still baffle and amaze scientists.
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(juice/juice)
2023-10-20 08:01:39
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