Abstract
IN a previous communication1, a staining technique was described for demonstrating the wide difference in basophilia of growing and non-growing cells of E. coli. The high basophilia of growing E. coli cells has been attributed by Belosersky2 to the presence of pentose nucleic acid which is not attached to protein. Apart from the work of Belosersky and his collaborators, the nature of the additional ribonucleic acid has received little attention, although it has been known for some years that rapidly growing and dividing cells of bacteria have a substantially higher concentration of ribonucleic acid than resting cells, and there is ample evidence of the heterogeneity of ribonucleic acid in metazoan cells3.
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WADE, H. Basophilia and High Ribonucleic Acid Content of Dividing E. coli Cells. Nature 176, 310 (1955). https://doi.org/10.1038/176310a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/176310a0
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