Effect of Light on Tobacco Mosaic Virus Formation under Anaerobic Conditions

Tobacco leaf discs, infected with tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), were floated on Vickery's solution and kept under N₂ in the light, conditions where the only source of ATP was assumed to be cyclic photophosphorylation. Usually the virus content was unaltered or decreased during the next 24 hours; occasionally there was some TMV formation, but less than in air and light, and it was abolished by 10^?5 M DCMU. This suggested that ATP produced by cyclic photophosphorylation was not used in TMV formation. Infected discs exposed to N₂ for longer than 2 hours formed less virus when transferred to air and light than discs not exposed to N₂, presumably because some breakdown in the TMV-forming apparatus occurred in ATP deficient conditions.