Introductory Remarks

Abstract

A few remarks about the structure of bovine pancreatic ribonuclease, as it is now known, may be useful. Contributors to this part of the monograph will discuss material that can be considered in a rational way only by reference to the covalent structure of the enzyme. The present state of these investigations is illustrated by FIGURE 1, which has been constructed from the combined studies of a number of individuals a t the Rockefeller Institute, New York, N. Y FIGURE 1. A partial structural formula for bovine pancreatic ribonuclease. The positions of the crosshatched residues are to be considered as arbitrary at present (see text). A. Ryle, and myself). References to the various papers that describe the details of structural analysis are summarized, for the most part, in articles included in the recent book Symposium on Protein Structure.' The positions of the four disulfide bridges are probably as shown in the figure, although there is still some question regarding the bridges between the second and eighth and between the third and seventh half-cystine residues, because of the poor yields 513