title: How to chase a red herring and come up with a smallmouth bass.
abstract: The collaboration between Alick Isaacs and myself started in the summer of 1956. Our initial project was to show, by electron microscopy, that interference between inactivated influenza virus and live virus involved the transfer of material from the interfering virus to the host cell. This approach failed for technical reasons. However, in the course of this work it appeared that more interfering activity remained in the system than we were entitled to expect. One possible explanation was that a substance, not identical with the initial interfering virus, was being generated. Subsequent experiments, aimed at checking this hypothesis, led to the description of interferon.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, University of Zurich Switzerland, Obere Geerenstr. 34, 80 Gockhausen, Switzerland. jean.lindenmann@access.unizh.ch
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lindenmann
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D049033:Chorioallantoic Membrane / Q000276:immunology / Q000821:virology; D049673:History, 20th Century; D009980:Influenza A virus / Q000276:immunology; D007372:Interferons / Q000266:history* / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D007372:Interferons