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Asymmetric Template Function of Microbial Deoxyribonucleic Acids: Transcription of Messenger Ribonucleic Acid

¹ Department of Biological Sciences, Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, New York 10021

ABSTRACT

In Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli, pulse-labeled ribonucleic acid (RNA) synthesized during step-down growth hybridized preferentially with the heavy (H) strand of methylated albumin-Kieselguhr-fractionated deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). At high RNA inputs, the ratio of RNA hybridized with the H strand to that hybridized with the light (L) strand was 8.7 for B. subtilis and 2.0 for E. coli. At high DNA inputs, the H/L hybridization ratio increased by a factor of two. This change in the hybridization ratio was attributable to the fraction of the pulse-labeled RNA which is in stable RNA components. The hybridization peak of pulse-labeled RNA was specifically located in the late-eluting region of the absorbance profile of the H strand. This region was considered to represent the most actively transcribing H strand templates.