From Chinese hamster cells, blocked at the beginning of the S phase by treatment with fluorodeoxyuridine and pulse-labeled with [3Hithyzuidine, one can release segments of native DNA containing template polynucleotide chains and the most recently replicated DNA. The segments, which can be released without shear by Iysis at temperatures below the melting point for the double helix, can be separated from both the nascent single chains (Okazaki pieces) and the long strands of native DNA in sodium perchlorate gradients. These 26S segments are equivalent to about 6 pm of native DNA, but may be replication forks rather than linear pieces.A highly regulated nuclease activity coupled with a ligase activity would appear to be necessary for the unwinding of [3H]thymidine during the subsequent S phase. After a pulselabel of 20 min, when most growing chains of [3HIDNA were long enough to sediment well ahead of the short 14C-labeled template segments, their presence and distinctive size could be determined in alkaline sucrose gradients (2). There was a clear size discontinuity between the template segments and the major component of nuclear DNA, which was dissociated into segments more than 100 Am in length. The role of such fragments in replication could only be inferred, since no direct evidence of a connection between these 2-pm fragments and the much smaller fragments of nascent DNA could be established (3). The nascent, single-chain DNA from mammalian cells is estimated to be 0.3-0.5 pm in length (4-6).These segments, originally found by Sakabe and Okazaki (7) in replicating cells of Escherichia coli, and since found to be associated with replication in other cells, appear to be intermediates in replication. Recently, Okazaki and associates have characterized them with respect to size, direction of chain growth, and rate of joining by ligase in normal-as well as polymerase I-deficient-strains (8, 9). * This paper is no. I in a series. (12) were grown (13) in Ham's F-10 medium. Some advantages of these cells for studying DNA replication are their fast growth (GI = 5.5 hr, S = 6.5 hr, and G2 + M = 3.5 hr) under our culture conditions at 36-370 and their rather firm attachment to the substrate except when dividing. Cells were grown in roller bottles with a diameter of about 10 cm (Bellco). When rotated at about 0.5 rpm, the dividing cells may detach temporarily, but reattach early in G1. However, when rotated at 3 rpm, most dividing cells cannot reattach and one may collect several million dividing cells in an hour from each culture of 1 to 2 X 10' cells.The dividing cells were transferred to polystyrene flasks and, after firm attachment (about 3 hr), the medium was exchanged for Ham's medium without thymidine and with 1 pAM fluorodeoxyuridine (FdU) to inhibit further synthesis of thymidylate. Dialyzed serum was also used in this medium to reduce the supply of exogenous thymidine. In spite of these precautions, the cells appear to have enough thymidine to replicate 5-10% of the DNA before the block becomes effect...