Bubbles in the sea surf adsorb and carry viruses to the surface where they are propelled into the air on tiny jets of seawater when the bubble bursts. The ejected jets become tiny drops of aerosol. The buble adsorption and virus concentration in the surf is analagous to industrial bubble levitation processes that concentrate metallic ores, enzymes, and finely divided organic crystals. Bubble levitation of viruses delibrately injected into the surf produced 200 times more virus per milliliter in the aerosol than were present in samples from the surf. Some aerosol drops created by the surf and carried by the wind fall out on the beach. The frequency of virus-bearing drops, that is, the number of plaques on seeded plates exposed on the beach, decreased exponentially with the distance downwind from the surf.

Bubbles rising through suspensions of the bacteriophages T2 and T4 and of Escherichia coli adsorb and eject these particles in droplets that are formed when the bubbles burst. The concentration of the viruses in ejected droplets, determined from electron microscopy, exceeded the suspension concentration by 50 times. Similar results were obtained for Escherichia coli. The viability of some of the adsorbed particles was established by biological counts.

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Recently, one of us has described some strong and peculiar chemical interactions between nucleic acids and certain steroidal diamines. 1 2 We now show that irehdiamine A (IDA, pregn-5-ene-3,f,20a-diamine) and malouetine (Mal, 5a-pregnan-3f3,20a-ylenebis[trimethylammoniumiodide]) are effective inhibitors of phage replication and mutagens, and postulate DNA as the primary target of diamine action in vivo.Materials and Methods.-Phage and bacterial stocks: The phage strains T2H and T4D were used in these studies. Various amber mutants of T4D were obtained through the courtesy of Dr. Robert Edgar. The RNA phage MS-2 was obtained from Dr. Cyrus Levinthal. The bacterial host cell B/1,5 was used for most of the standard growth experiments. For certain other experiments, we used the strains K12 (X), K12 AB259 (an Hfr Hayes), CR63, and B/2.Growth media: Broth-1% Bacto-tryptone, 0.5% NaCl, 0.2% glucose; M9-6 gm Na2HPO4, 3 gm KH2PO4, 0.5 gm NaCl, 1 gm NH4Cl, added per 1, pH = 7.0. Solutions were made 1 X 10-3 M in MgSO4 and 0.4% in glucose after autoclaving. For experiments involving diamines, these media were diluted by a factor of 4 (broth/4), and 2 (M9/2), respectively. Standard infection and determination of burst size: B/1,5 cells were grown to 2 X 108/ml, washed 2 X, suspended in M9 (-glucose), starved by aeration for 1 hr, assayed for bacterial concentration