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The Enzymatic Methylation of the Nucleic Acids

1963; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; Volume: 28; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1101/sqb.1963.028.01.027

1943-4456

Marvin Gold, J Hurwitz,

RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms

The methyl groups found in the so-called “trace bases” of S-RNA have their origin in the amino acid methionine (Biswas et al., 1961; Borek et al., 1962). Using S-RNA derived from Escherichia coli strain W6 meth-, starved of its essential amino acid, it has been shown that crude extracts of E. coli are capable of catalyzing the direct methylation of S-RNA at the polyribonucleotide level (Fleissner and Borek, 1962). We have studied the nucleic acids of E. coli strain K12 58–161 meth- when this organism is cultured in growth-limiting concentrations of methionine. It appears that under these conditions not only is S-RNA active as a methyl group acceptor, but the DNA is also active (Gold, Hurwitz, and Anders, 1963a).