Abstract
THE COMPOSITION OF THE PENTOSE NUCLEIC ACIDS OF YEAST AND PANCREAS
Highlights
The historically understandable attempts to simplify the problem of nucleic acid structure by the formulation of the tetranucleotide hypot.hesis have found their classical exposition in Levene’s monograph of 1931 [1]
The present communication describes the application of these procedures to a study of the distribution of the nitrogenous constituents of the pentose nucleic acids of yeast and pig pancreas and includes a consideration of aspects related to this problem, such as the mechanisms of the acid hydrolysis of these compounds
As waspointed out above, it was found advantageous to omit the washing of the purine hydrochlorides that precipitated in the course of the hydrolysis with methanolic HCl, in order to avoid the contamination of the pyrimidine fract.ion
Summary
The same tendencies are expressed, less precisely, in statements found in many text-books according to which the nucleic acid unit, having a molecular weight of about 1200, contains four different bases (two purines and two pyrimidines) in equimolecular proportions. Our present knowledge of the structure of nucleic acids has been reviewed repeatedly in the recent past [24]. The method for the quantitative estimation of individual purines and pyrimidines in mixtures of these bases, presented in the preceding paper [7], has made possible a new approach to the study of the composition of nucleic acids. The present communication describes the application of these procedures to a study of the distribution of the nitrogenous constituents of the pentose nucleic acids of yeast and pig pancreas and includes a consideration of aspects related to this problem, such as the mechanisms of the acid hydrolysis of these compounds. Ribonucleic Acid of Yeast-The purification procedure used was a modification of that of Fletcher et al [8]. 15 gm. of yeast nucleic acid (Merck)
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