BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 62 89CRICK, Francis H. C. and WATSON, James D. Virus Structure: General Principles. IN: Ciba Foundation Symposium on the Nature of Viruses, pp. 5-18. London, 1957. Octavo, original green cloth, dust jacket, custom box. $18,000 First edition of Watson and Crick’s Virus Structure, signed by both Watson and Crick on the first page of their article. Presented as the first paper at the prestigious 1956 Ciba Foundation symposium, this seminal work revealed Watson and Crick’s theory of virus structure. Following their famous announcement of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953, this work on viruses “would be the last direct collaboration between Crick and Watson.” Arriving in Cambridge in June 1955, Watson had become “intrigued by the similar size and structure of viruses and microsomes: small round objects in cells. Microsomes seemed to contain both protein and RNA, so perhaps they had something to do with the decoding machinery and viruses would illuminate it. Before he arrived, Watson had written” to Crick and the two worked together in the same lab (Ridley, 92-3). In March 1956, at a three-day symposium organized by the Ciba Foundation, “Crick presented, as the first paper on the first day, the general principles of virus structure that he and Watson had worked out in the previous six months... Viruses were small…the protein molecules of the virus can only be of limited size. Rough numerical estimates show that this amount, used once, is not enough to produce a shell to cover the RNA. Thus the coat must be built up of identical subunits… The paper suggested in a sentence that microsomes might also be made up of identical protein subunits. But, they said, ‘In any case, since microsomes contain only a limited amount of RNA, we would predict, by an extension of our first argument, that no very large protein molecule will be found that is not an aggregate’… so Watson and Crick imagined that, structurally, the microsome, like the virus, was a shell of protein containing a highly specific packet of RNA… Watson and Crick’s theory of virus structure proved correct, crucial, productive for virologists” (Judson, Eighth Day of Creation, 315-6). A fine copy, scarce signed. Signed By Both James Watson And Francis Crick
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