I. Introduction In his biography "Arrow in the Blue" the author Arthur
Koestler suggests ironically that the fate of an individual may be
predicted by examining the content of the newspapers at birth.
Adenoviruses were discovered in 1953 (ROWE et al., 1953; HILLEMAN and
WERNER, 1954). At this time the Salk poliomyelitis vaccine was developed
(SALK et al., 1954) and in the same year the discovery of the double
helical structure of DNA (WATSON and CRICK, 1953) and the plaque assay
for one animal virus (DULBECCO and VOGT, 1953) was announced. Thus, this
new group of viruses was born with great hopes for progress in molecular
biology and for the control of animal virus infections. In the short
interval be- tween 1953 and 1956 the adenoviruses were discovered,
methods for laboratory diagnosis and serotyping were established, the
epidemiology was clarified and a highly effective vaccine was developed
and approved (for a review see HILLE- MAN, 1966). Succeeding years
showed, however, that the vaccines were contami- nated with the
oncogenic SV 40 virus and that the adenoviruses themselves were
tumorigenic. Since the discovery of adenoviruses animal virology was
developed into a quantitative science offering explanation for viral
functions at the molecular level. Precise biochemical tools to
characterize the genome and its transcription products as well as the
structural proteins of these viruses are now available.