CHAPTER EIGHT 



VIRUS GENETICS, VIRUS MULTIPLICATION, AND 



VIRUS PHYSICS 



Stripped of their practical interest as agents causing disease, 

 the deep reason for studying viruses is to find out how they work, 

 particularly because they may be representative of how living 

 systems function in their very primary ])rocesses. The physicist 

 has an even more absorbing interest, which is to find out if phys- 

 ical laws are sufficient to explain all virus processes. It seems 

 reasonably certain that viruses are not concerned with the struc- 

 ture of the atomic nucleus, nor with relativistic electrodynamics, 

 nor cosmology. These are the great uncertainties of physical 

 theory today. Instead, the simjile electrical laws and laws of 

 quantum mechanics, which have i)roved completely adequate 

 to explain the findings of chemistry, and which appear to be on a 

 solid foundation, should serve to explain virus behavior. These 

 laws cannot be applied as yet, because neither the structure of 

 viruses nor of their environment is yet sufficiently accurately 

 described. Nevertheless, the biophysicist cannot help looking 

 with some anxiety, as the descri})tion of viruses and their beha- 

 vior becomes more and more definite, to see whether the parts 

 and their functions are of the right type to be susceptible to phys- 

 ical description without invoking new principles. He remembers 

 that the nature of the spectrum of black-body radiation, known 

 toward the end of the nineteenth century, carried in it the down- 

 fall of classical physics, then moving so confidently forward. Per- 

 haps there is already a clear conflict between virus behavior and 

 physical laws — a conflict which requires deeper insight to appre- 

 ciate than we have yet brought to bear. Perhaps, on the other 

 hand, a resolute confidence in physical laws can even now be 



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