Stabilizing effectiveness of alkali metals toward ribonucleic acid from the bacterial virus R17
✍ Scribed by Julius A. Gordon
- Book ID
- 102763419
- Publisher
- Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
- Year
- 1965
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 518 KB
- Volume
- 3
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0006-3525
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✦ Synopsis
The addition of alkali metal cations (0.10-1 .OOM) stabilizes the macromolecular structure of Rl7-RKA as evidenced by a shift of t,he optical density-temperature profiles to higher temperature. This effectiveness is found to decrease in the order Lit > Ka+ > K c > R b + > Cs+ arid the midpoints of each profile :ire found to increase linearly for each salt with the log of the salt concentration. The differences in effectiveness in this series can be best interpreted as a decreasing specific interaction of Li+, Na+, K+, arid Rb+ with the phosphate groups of IlNA as suggested by known binding constants to phosphate groups and the failure of adenine, adenosine, adenine monophosphoric acid, and uracil to show specific solubility differences in these salts. The importance of this feature is that the thermal stability of RXA in the presence of alkali metals shows specific: inn requirements in additlion to general electrostatic interactions. Furthermore, the more nonspecific, ionic strength-dependent stabilization of native IIX.4 also involves a decrease in adenine solubility (e.g., increased artivity) and an increase in phosphate solubility in the aqueous salt. solutions in addition to the well recognized Coulonibic shielding of the negatively charged phosphates.