The Enzymic Synthesis of Amino Acyl Derivatives of Ribonucleic Acid

The Isolation and Characterization of Soluble Ribonucleic Acid Obtained by Solvent Extraction of Bacteria*

“…The yield of purified s-RNA obtained from E. coli by solvent extraction varies somewhat from the values reported by other investigators and does not represent complete extraction of s-RNA. Ofengand et al (1961) reported that s-RNA comprises about 1 % of the dry weight of E. coli; Tissiéres (1959) found 0.3 g of s-RNA/ 300 g wet weight and Zubay (1962) found 5 g of s-RNA/ 2000 g wet weight of E. coli.…”

“…The nucleotide composition was determined using the method described by Osawa et al (1958). The biological acceptor activity was determined using the method described by Ofengand et al (1961) with the radioactive counting carried out on a Nuclear-Chicago gas flow counter equipped with a micromil window. Deoxypentose was determined by the diphenylamine test (Dische, 1953).…”

A prebiotic basis for ATP as the universal energy currency

“…Nonetheless, some of the other ions studied, notably Cr 3+ and Co 3+ , have a similar ionic radius and charge density, yet do not have a remotely comparable catalytic effect, so the size and charge density cannot be the only explanation for our results. The electronic configuration of Fe 3+ may also play a role: unlike Cr 3+ and Co 3+ , Fe 3+ has the electronic configuration [Ar]3d 5 , having all 5 d orbitals half occupied. However, Mn 2+ , which can substitute Mg 2+ in the catalytic centre of acetate kinase, has an equivalent 3d orbital, yet yielded negative results in our experiments.…”

“…Unlike the simple phosphorylation of intermediary metabolites, the leaving group during nucleotide polymerization is pyrophosphate (PPi) [3]. Likewise, activation of amino acids by adenylation liberates PPi as the leaving group [4][5][6][7]. The hydrolysis of PPi renders these steps exothermic, if not practically irreversible [3,8].…”

Partition Chromatography of Yeast and Escherichia coli Soluble Ribonucleic Acid. Relation of Coding Properties to Fractionation*

“…c X^Vomparative studies of soluble ribonucleic acid (s-RNA) preparations of different biological origin (guinea pig, rat, rabbit, yeast, Neurospora, and Escherichia coli) have documented complex similarities and differences. The base composition of average s-RNA from various organisms has been shown to be remarkably similar in the near equivalence of guanine monophosphate (GMP)* 1 and cytidine monophosphate (CMP) as well as of adenine monophosphate (AMP) and uridine monophosphate (UMP), a high GMP and CMP content, and the presence of pseudo-UMP (Dunn et al, 1960; Singer and Cantoni, 1960;Monier et al, 1960;Ofengand et al, 1961;Brown et al, 1962). Average s-RNA preparations from various organisms are also alike in the presence of methylated bases (Dunn, 1959;Cantoni et al, 1962) and in the presence of identical terminal sequences at both ends of the molecule (Hecht et al, 1959;Berg et al, 1961;Singer and Cantoni, 1960; Zillig et al, 1960).…”