title: Discovering viroids--a personal perspective.
abstract: During 1970 and 1971, I discovered that a devastating disease of potato plants is not caused by a virus, as had been assumed, but by a new type of subviral pathogen, the viroid. Viroids are so small--one fiftieth of the size of the smallest viruses--that many scientists initially doubted their existence. We now know that viroids cause many damaging diseases of crop plants. Fortunately, new methods that are based on the unique properties of viroids now promise effective control.
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. diener@umbi.umb.edu
authors.forename: Theodor O
authors.initials: TO
authors.lastname: Diener
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004591:Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D010935:Plant Diseases / Q000821:virology*; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry / Q000266:history; D011198:Solanum tuberosum / Q000821:virology*; D014772:Viroids / Q000737:chemistry / Q000472:pathogenicity / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D012367:RNA, Viral