ON THE SIMILARITY OF CHAIN LENGTH OF NUCLEIC ACIDS

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Abstract
In an earlier communication (Nature 179: 426, 1957) it was suggested that many cellular or viral ribo-nucleoproteins contain one molecule of ribonucleic acid (RNA) per particle and that the molecular weight of the RNA in ribonucleoprotein particles is about 1.7 x 106. This contention is supported in the present paper by the demonstration that the molecular weight of the RNA from a spherical virus, turnip yellow mosaic virus (TYMV), is the same as that previously demonstrated for a rod-shaped virus and microsomal particles. These values for RNA are compared with those of DNA from bacteriophage oX174 and cellular DNA. Particle weights of about 1.7 x 106 and 4 x 106 have been found at the highest frequency for the single-stranded and double-stranded nucleic acids, respectively. Chains of all these nucleic acids appear to have the same length of about 5000 nucleotides. The significance of these observations is discussed.