Textbook authored by Gunther S. Stent published in 1963.
Stent, G. S. 1963. Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses. W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco. [Google Books]
Preface: FOURTEEN YEARS AGO, in the summer of 1949, a little group of phage workers were passing the time of day in M. Delbrück’s laboratory in Pasadena by filling several blackboards with an outline of all that they then knew of bacterial viruses. It was their hope that an orderly array of all the available facts might perhaps suggest to them new working hypotheses, or make evident hithertofore overlooked clues. Unfortunately, this exercise failed to bring the desired enlightenment. But when it was discovered a few months later that one of them had preserved this ephemeral chalk outline on paper, his notes became the basis of the cooperative "Syllabus on Procedures, Facts and Interpretations in Phage" (59). I have followed here the general plan of this Syllabus, since most of the great advances made meanwhile in the understanding of bacterial viruses have but filled in lacunae of its categories.
Even though bacteriophages have now assumed a position of extraordinary importance in modern biology, only one really comprehensive presentation of bacterial virology, Mark Adams’ posthumous Bacteriophages (2), has appeared in recent years. This book, completed and edited for publication by friends and colleagues after Adams’ death, is an invaluable source of factual, theoretical, and methodological information, and should be in the possession of everyone seriously interested in bacterial viruses. However, Bacteriophages is not, in my opinion, particularly suitable for introducing university students or nonspecialists to the subject, and hence I have attempted to fill here the need for an introductory text. Though no doubt self-evident, I would like to call attention to the superficial nature of my treatment; its aim is to give merely a bird’s-eye view of what has now become a vast and complex ensemble of facts. This textbook is not intended to be a monograph; rather, its purpose is a preparation for eventual study of more serious works, such as Adams’ book, or specialized review articles, or the original literature. In order to facilitate this study, lists of suggested further reading have been appended to each chapter. These lists include the relevant articles whose reprints can be found in the collection Papers on Bacterial Viruses (595). Mention should be made here also of two other books useful to the student of bacterial viruses: Luria’s General Virology (440), an introductory text that juxtaposes homologous aspects of bacterial, plant, and animal viruses for an integrated presentation of the new science of virology and Raettig’s Bakteriophagie (522), an ecumenical, complete, and cross-indexed bibliography of the literature of bacterial viruses that lists no fewer than 5655 papers and books published on this subject between 1917 and 1956.
Most of this text was written during a sabbatical leave from the University of California. I would like to thank the National Science Foundation for the grant of a Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship; Itaru Watanabe, of the University of Kyoto, and Max Perutz, F. H. C. Crick, and Sydney Brenner, of the University of Cambridge, for hospitable accommodation in their laboratories; and the Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge, for granting me membership in their High Table. I am grateful to my friends A. H. Doermann. J. Weigle, and E. L. Wollman for providing valuable and frequently severe criticisms of the manuscript and to Mrs. Margery Hoogs for her patient editorial help.
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