The roles of small ions, especially calcium, in virus disassembly, takeover, and transformation.

Three related hypotheses are proposed. (1) Many simple viruses disassemble in the act of crossing a membrane, drawing energy from ionic disequilibria across the membrane. (2) Many of the metabolic changes early in virus infection are due to altered ion fluxes across membranes and the consequently altered ion concentrations in cytoplasm. (3) The crucial determinant of the transformed phenotype is also a change in ion concentrations. Ca2+ ions may play a major role in these effects.