Polymerization of Tobacco Mosaic Virus from Electric Birefringence Studies

Abstract

IT has been reported¹ that the addition of methylene blue to aqueous solutions of tobacco mosaic virus produces increases in viscosity which can be interpreted in terms of conversion of the monomeric units to end-to-end dimers and possibly higher polymers. The suggestion was made that the association may be the result of interactions between a given methylene blue molecule and sites on the nucleic acid chains of different macromolecules. The production of end-to-end aggregates by an association of this type is in accord with the structural investigations of tobacco mosaic virus², which place the nucleic acid at the core of a relatively compact helix. It therefore was of interest to determine whether or not the suggestion of end-to-end aggregate formation by methylene blue could be substantiated independently with a well-characterized monomeric preparation, and by a method particularly sensitive to such aggregates.