Comparative Endocrinology

More recently, in the hurly-burly of expansion that has followed the development of new virus culture methods, pathological changes in virus infected cells have frequently been neglected. Even the electron microscope was used at first almost exclusively in the study of extracellular virus. Now, in this symposium, sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences, Dr. Robert Love has brought together a group of scientists who have continued work in this painstaking field. Older techniques of histology and cytochemistry have been applied to various new systems, and several new techniques are reported which hold great promise for the elucidation of virus growth mechanisms and the patterns of cell response. Electron microscopy has been extensively used in the study of sectioned infected cells and has yielded considerable information in those systems, such as pox and salivary gland virus infection, where distinctive particles occur. Studies by Dr. Lepine and his group using cinematography, and other studies using phase microscopy help to tie observations on fixed preparations with the transformations that occur in living cells. However, the newest and most promising reports are those that describe the chemical identification of components in infected cells by means of fluoroscein labelled antibody, micro-spectrography and the fluorescent stain, acridine orange. It is only a pity that the striking colored pictures of acridine orange stained cells that were shown by Dr. Niven could not be reproduced in this volume. Although this is a technical publication on a specialized subject, its descriptive nature and many illustrations, together with the fundamental import of the results make this a volume of more than usual interest to the general scientific reader. The descriptions of new techniques and the new information on mechanisms of virus growth make it a useful reference for virologists. The sometimes neglected approaches to virology that are represented in this volume will doubtless yield important information in our search for the basic processes of biological replication.