Robin A. Weiss FRS (1940-2026)

ALV was required to "pseudotype" RSV whereby the env of one virus is incorporated into another virus lacking it, conferring a different tropism.During his investigations, Robin became proficient in using the plaque assay developed a few year earlier by Rubin and Temin to detect RSV replication, and noted that cells from certain chick embryos supported the release of infectious RSV even in the absence of trans-complementing ALV [4].Using neutralization and interference assays, Robin then showed that this elusive "chick helper factor" had distinct tropism from the original RSV while no ALV helper virus could be detected in the chick embryos cultures [5,6].At about the same time, Robert Dougherty detected expression of "group specific" antigens gs (later called Gag) in apparently uninfected chick embryos [7], and Jim Payne with Roger Chubb reported that this Gag antigen appeared to be inherited as a dominant autosomal gene