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The Neutralization of Animal Viruses

II. A Critical Comparison of Hypotheses

From the Departments of Microbiology and Radiochemistry, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Abstract

The experimental data of Dulbecco, Vogt and Strickland are used to discriminate between two hypotheses on the mechanism by which the infectivity of viruses is neutralized.

The orthodox hypothesis of dissociation, as developed by Fazekas de St.Groth, Watson and Reid (2) and the nondissociation hypothesis of Dulbecco et al. (1) are found to account equally well for the trivial features of the neutralization process.

At the quantitative level however, the nondissociation hypothesis becomes incompatible with the experimental evidence on several counts; what it postulates as constants are seen to vary systematically; and its basic assumptions prove to be either inadequate or unnecessary. The dissociation hypothesis is not contradicted at any point by the same evidence.

Finally, it is shown that the discriminatory tests listed in support of the nondissociation hypothesis by Dulbecco et al. are, for the most part, inconclusive as their results are confounded with the systematic errors of the assay technique; the remainder directly contradicts their hypothesis. The dissociation hypothesis fits this further set of data too.