Genetic recombinations leading to production of active bacteriophage from ultraviolet inactivated bacteriophage particles

1949. Luria, Salvador Edward (1912-91) & Dulbecco, Renato (1914- ). Genetic recombinations leading to production of active bacteriophage from ultraviolet inactivated bacteriophage particles. Offprint from Genetics 34 (March 1949). 8vo. 93-125pp. Diagrams. 250 x 172 mm. Without wrappers as issued. Light marginal soiling on first leaf, but very good. Ownership stamp & docketing.

First Separate Edition. Garrison-Morton 2526.1. In the late 1940s Luria discovered "the production of active phage particles when many inactivated phages were allowed to infect bacteria. He called this multiplicity reactivation and he explained it in terms of the existence of a 'gene pool' formed by the independent replication of discrete genetic units, from which active phage particles were assembled. The infecting phage was assumed to break up into such units once it entered the host cell. The inactivity of ultraviolet irradiated phage was attributed to the damage to one or several of these units. Damaged units of one type, Luria believed, could be replaced from the gene-pool by undamaged units of another type, and active phage particles successfully assembled. By quantitative techniques Luria and Dulbecco were able to suggest figures for the number of such sub-units in the various phages" (Olby, The Path to the Double Helix, p. 299).

Luria, a member of Delbruck's "phage group" and a teacher of the young James Watson, received a share of the 1969 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discoveries regarding the replication mechanism and genetic structure of viruses. His co-author Dulbecco was awarded part of the 1975 Nobel Prize for his research on tumor viruses. Magill, The Nobel Prize Winners: Physiology or Medicine, pp. 1065-72; 1215-24.

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