History of Early Bacteriophage Research and Emergence of Key Concepts in Virology
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REVIEW
History of Early Bacteriophage Research and Emergence of Key Concepts in Virology A. V. Letarov1,2 1
Winogradskii Institute of Microbiology, Federal Research Center of Biotechnology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117312 Moscow, Russia 2 Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia email: [email protected] Received July 6, 2020 Revised August 2, 2020 Accepted August 2, 2020
Abstract—The viruses of bacteria — bacteriophages — were discovered 20 years after the discovery of viruses. However, this was mainly the bacteriophage research that, after the first 40 years, yielded the modern concept of the virus and to large extent formed the grounds of the emerging molecular genetics and molecular biology. Many specific aspects of the bacte riophage research history have been addressed in the existing publications. The integral outline of the events that led to the formation of the key concepts of modern virology is presented in this review. This includes the opposition of F. d’Herelle and J. Bordet viewpoints over the nature of the bacteriophage, the history of lysogeny discovery and of determination of the mechanisms of underlying this phenomenon, the work of the Phage group led by M. Delbrück in USA, the development of the genetic analysis of bacteriophages and other research that eventually led to emergence of the concept of the virus (bac teriophage) as a transmissive genetic program. The review also covers a brief history of early applications of the bacterio phages such as phage therapy and phage typing. DOI: 10.1134/S0006297920090096 Keywords: bacteriophages, history of bacteriophage research, bacteriophage discovery, the Phage Group, discovery of lysogeny, history of phage therapy
“For many young scientists the future is more important than the past and the history of science begins tomorrow.
The danger of parachuting young enthusiastic scientists into a flowerbed of selected data and fully bloomed conceptions should not be underestimated” André Lwoff, 1953
INTRODUCTION Bacteriophage biology occupies a special place in the history of biological science of the XXth century. The studies in this area that started slightly over a hundred years ago have resulted in the development of the first suf ficiently universal and safe technology for ethiotropic treatment of bacterial infections and the first technology for a highresolution typing of bacterial strains. Bacteriophage research led to the elucidation of the fun damental nature of the viral infection, and to a great degree became a basis for establishing molecular mecha
nisms of heredity. Various episodes of the “romantic” period of the first decades of phage research, when the breakthrough into a fundamentally novel conceptual base of biological science was made, were described in detail in numerous reviews including those cited in this work. The introductory chapter in the collection of the key papers on bacteriophage biology prepared by Gunter Stent and published in 1961 is of a particular interest [1]. The author
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