Abstract
IT has been known for some time that mRNA of bacteriophage T7 is stable. Summers1 measured the decay of acid-insoluble radioactivity in the mRNA after new synthesis was stopped with actinomycin in T7-infected, actinomycin-permcable Escherichia coli cells. The halflife of T7 mRNA was estimated greater than 25–30 min at 30° C compared with about 2.5 min for E. coli mRNA. Marrs and Yanofsky2 showed that the mRNA transcribed from the tryptophan operon is degraded normally in T7-infected E. coli but T7 mRNA is stable, measured by hybridisation with T7 DNA. In these experiments only chemical stability of T7 mRNA was studied in terms of acid-insoluble amount or DNA-hybridisable amount and no information was obtained on the functional integrity of the mRNA.
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YAMADA, Y., WHITAKER, P. & NAKADA, D. Functional instability of T7 early mRNA. Nature 248, 335–338 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/248335a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/248335a0
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