Date of Award:

5-1-1964

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Biology

Department name when degree awarded

Plant Virology

Committee Chair(s)

G. W. Cochran

Committee

G. W. Cochran

Committee

A. S. Dhaliwal

Committee

A. T. Tu

Committee

J. Storz

Committee

G. W. Welkie

Abstract

The active research in cell-free virus synthesis at this university has placed great emphasis on an improved procedure to assay virus infectivity. The conventional method used (finger inoculation) was simple, but low insensitivity and precision. Infectivity assays of plant viruses are complicated by large differences in susceptibility among local lesion hosts. Factors influencing the susceptibility are the age of the host and the environmental conditions under which the plants are grown, such as temperature, humidity, soil moisture, nutrition and lighting. Another problem is to get the virus into the host cell. The inoculation method has to cause enough injury to allow entry of the virus without killing the cell.

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