Question

Mane the virus which was crystallised for the first time.
A) parrot fever virus
B) Smallpox virus
C) TMV
D) HIV

Answer 1

Hint:Crystallisation is the process of creating the organised particles which is exactly similar to that of a virus which can describe the physical and molecular details of a virus using a technique called X- Ray crystallography. This process is very much beneficial not only to understand the structural and molecular aspects of a virus but also to know the changes undergone by viruses during different stages of life such as lysogeny and lytic life cycle.

Complete answer:
TMV( tobacco Mosaic virus) was the first virus ever to be crystallised in the year 1935 by a chemist known By name Wendell Meredith Stanley who was an assistant at Rockefeller institute for medical research in the department of Plant and Animal Pathology. Using many biochemical techniques instead of microbiological methods Stanley could crystallise TMV. This process gave information about the molecular details, protein arrangements, mode of infection in tobacco leaf. Later using the same technique many other viruses were crystallised and were studied, not only viruses many protein complexes whose tertiary structure were difficult to be explained based on biochemical assays could be solved.

Hence, the correct answer is option C.

Note:Stanley became the first ever virologist to win a Nobel prize, he was awarded the Nobel prize in the year 1946 for this phenomenal work. TMV is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus species in the genus Tobamovirus that infects a wide range of plants, especially tobacco and other members of the family Solanaceae.