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Published October 1, 1963 | public
Journal Article

A New Ribonucleic Acid Polymerase Appearing after Mengovirus Infection of L-Cells

Abstract

The ribonucleic acid viruses represent an anomaly in the biological world, being its only known entities which lack deoxyri-bonucleic acid. Nevertheless, these viruses readily transmit genetic characters, they can be mutated by agents which affect DNA (1) , and their RNA is sufficient to determine their heritable characteristics (2). In the light of present knowledge of genetic mechanisms, especially as elucidated by the work of Jacob and Monod (3), it is generally believed that viral RNA can function as a type of messenger RNA and experimental support for this notion exists (4). This leaves open the question of how RNA can duplicate, since cellular messenger RNA does not appear to be directly replicated, but is a complementary copy of DNA. The work described here was undertaken in an attempt to clarify the mechanism of viral RNA duplication.

Additional Information

© 1963 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Received for publication, May 1, 1963. Supported by a grant from the National Foundation. We should like to thank Dr. James Schwartz for his assistance in the performance of the electrophoresis experiments. Our thanks also go to Drs. T. August and J. Hurwitz for their counsel.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023