An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

ALPER, Tikvah

1 entries
  • 12834

Does the agent of scrapie replicate without nucleic acids?

Nature, 214, 764-766, 1967.

This paper, which predated Griffith's' paper (No. 12833), demonstrated that the scrapie agent replicates without nucleic acids. Alper and colleagues irradiated scrapie infected mouse brain extracts with lethal ultraviolet rays at both 254-265 and 280-285 wavelengths, which would kill all viruses and bacteria then known, and inactivate or destroy nucleic acids. They did not draw the conclusion that the scapie agent must be associated with a protein, but that was the clear implication of their research. This paper was a catalyst for Griffith to develop the work published in No. 12833.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)



Subjects: BIOLOGY › MOLECULAR BIOLOGY › Protein Synthesis, INFECTIOUS DISEASE › Prion Diseases, WOMEN, Publications by › Years 1900 - 1999