Discovery and early history of the Polydnaviruses

The discovery of the polydnaviruses was by accident. A student was looking at the ultra structure of the ovary of a parasitic wasp. He came to me because he saw some “strange” particles. To me they looked like viruses so I had him do a DNA extraction of the sections and the center of the particles disappeared. This led to a discussion between Dr. G. Salt and I. He said the particles were not viruses and I said they were. It is now clear that we both were right and Salt realized this before his death. Concurrent with some of these discussions I got several people involved with these viruses that resulted in a series of papers on the biology and structure of these viruses. It is now appears clear that they evolved from the viruses. I will discuss some of this early work and the people involved, as well as some of the early work showing that there are several types of polydna viruses. I will also cover some of the early known effects of these polydna viruses on the host and developing parasitoid.