Oligoribonuclease, an exoribonuclease specific for small oligoribonucleotides, was initially characterized 20 years ago (S. K. Niyogi and A. K. Datta, J. Biol. Chem. 250:7307-7312, 1975) and shown to be different from RNase II and polynucleotide phosphorylase. Here we demonstrate, using mutant strains and purified enzymes, that oligoribonuclease is not a manifestation of RNases D, BN, T, PH, an...

The assembly of polypeptide chains during protein biosynthesis is believed to proceed from the NHz-terminal through the COOH-terminal amino acid (l-4). Hence, the most direct method for ascertaining the direction in which the genetic message is read is to determine the end location of a given amino acid in polypeptide chains synthesized in a cell-free system under the direction of synthetic pol...

Human gene therapy research is currently discouraging due to the lack of suitable delivery vehicles for nucleic acid transfer to affected cell types. There is an urgent need for optimized gene delivery tools capable of protecting the polynucleotide from degradation through its route from site of administration to gene expression. Besides difficulties arising during the preparation of the curren...

It is already known that modification of E. col i polynucleotide phosphorylase by endogenous proteolysis induces drastic changes in both phosphorolysis and polymerisation reactions. The structural parameters of the proteolysed polynucleotide phosphorylase are described. The phosphorolysis of polynucleotide, which is quite progressive for the native enzyme, is shown to be only partially progress...

Oneof the central problems in molecular biology today is the mechanism whereby genetic information which is stored in the deoxyribosenucleic acid (DNA) is transferred to other molecular species. It is quite clear that genetic information is contained in the DNA molecules. This was initially demonstrated by work on the bacterial transforming factor and more recently by the analysis of the mechan...

The specificities of anti-polynucleotide antibodies found in human sera were studied using several immunological procedures. Anti-native DNA (NDNA) antibodies and certain anti-double-stranded RNA (DSRNA) antibodies were found to react with single-stranded DNA (SDNA), and anti-NDNA antibodies were observed to react more avidly with SDNA than with NDNA in most sera tested. Antibodies to NDNA show...

Circular dichroism spectroscopy (CD) sensitively reflects even slight alterations of the base stacking geometry in DNA (Tinoco et al. 1980; Johnson et al. 1981). However, the alterations cannot be unambiguously interpreted in conforma­ tional terms so that, for example, the question concerning the origin of the relatively extensive temperature-induced changes in the CD spectrum of a synthetic D...

The enzyme, polynucleotide phosphorylase, catalyzes the polymerization of nucleoside diphosphates to polyribonucleotides with the formation of inorganic orthophosphate (1, 2). The reaction is readily reversible, and the phosphorolysis of polyribonucleotides has been studied extensively (3-6). Several recent reviews (7-9) afford extensive summaries of the literature. In the accompanying paper (l...

The signature sequence amplification method (SSAM) described herein is an approach for amplifying noncoding RNA (ncRNA), microRNA (miRNA), and small polynucleotide sequences. A key point of the SSAM technology is the generation of signature sequences. The signature sequences include target sequences (miRNA, ncRNA, and/or any small polynucleotide sequence) flanked by two DNA fragments. Target se...