University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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VIRUS SYNTHESIS The 512 pieces of the tobacco mosaic virus have been taken apart and reassembled. Simple as this sounds to the layman, it marks a great step in biological research and another first for the University of California. The intricate experimentation which led to the partial synthesis was conducted by Heinz L. Fraenkel-Conrat. associate research biochemist, and Robley Williams, professor of biophysics, both of the University Virus laboratory. Partial synthesis has been clone with many other compounds, but this is the first time it has been done with a self-duplicating system like a virus. This step may lead in the future to the formation of new viruses or the recombination of exi:tinir one:. esisigs•••• ' ... Such an advance in the fiekl of viruses gives hope of similar steps in the field of genes and chromosomes. the agents of heredity; viruses and genes are the same size and composed of the same materials. It may be possible in the future to synthesize viruses which give immunity. but are incapable of carrying disease. It seems to reduce the study of viruses to the level of a complicated chemical problem. %Vitale new fields of research have been opened up, as the mystery of viruses has been diminished. Th scic inc: ent flui of for hoz to

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ALL-U WEEK END On Friday, October 28, the annual All-U week end got on its usual boisterous way. This year the UCLA campus assumed the responsibility of hosting the festivities. Though the meeting of the eight campuses of the University at some member campus is a regular occurrence, this year ' s confab had the additional purpose of honoring President Robert Gordon Sproul on his twenty-fifth year in office. Events got under way with the All-U meeting on Friday morning. At this time the President spoke and the queens were crowned. In the evening three happenings kept the students occupied. The first of these was a parade over which the President presided. It included sonic 50 floats from various groups, based on the theme The C Around Us. Next came the rally featuring skits from each of the University cam, uses and the yell leaders of each group. A dance in the women ' s gym completed the evening. At midnight the float winners were announced. On Saturday came the Cal-UCLA game, the high point of the week end. After the game the week end officially ended and among wails of sorrow the representatives of the Berke- ley campus returned home to bury their heads in their books.

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POLIO VIRUS CRYSTALLIZED A week after the announcement of the virus synthesis the University of California Virus laboratory revealed still another first in the progress of science. Speaking before the National Academy of Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, C. E. Scltwerdt, associate research biochemist, and F. L. Schaffer, Research fellow, reported the successful crystallization of purified poliomyelitis virus. Crystallization of plant-infecting viruses dates back to 1935 and the experimentation of Wendell M. Stanley, the present director of the Virus laboratory ; Stanley received the Nobel Prize for his work. This, however, is the first time an animal-infecting or human-infecting virus has been crystallized. Crystallization is an important criterion for purity ; as a result the virus crystallized by the two scientists at Berkeley is one of the purest samples of animal virus ever made. This step is very important ill polio research, because now scientists can be sure that no contaminating body will be included in the virus particles used for research. The entire mass of virus, extracted from the tissue culture fluid of a monkey ' s kidney, weighed only one thousandth of a gram. To produce a pound of virus crystals, sufficient for a billion doses of vaccine, would cost about $500 mil- lion. But, regardless of cost, another step has been taken toward the elimination of polio. r