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Increase in Antiviral Activity of Polynucleotides by Thermal Activation

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 20 June 1970

An Erratum to this article was published on 23 May 1970

Abstract

LIMITED preincubation (5 min to 2 h) at 37° C was found to increase the activity of several synthetic polynucleotides in producing cellular resistance to virus infection in vitro by several orders of magnitude, and to a lesser extent, induction of interferon in vitro and in vivo. The thermal activating effect was observed for both alternating copolymers and homopolymer pairs of either RNA or DNA types, but was most marked with the alternating polyribonucleotides such as poly A·poly U and poly I·poly C. Our findings might help to explain the variable biological activity of polynucleotides according to the way they are processed before testing.

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DE CLERCQ, E., WELLS, R. & MERIGAN, T. Increase in Antiviral Activity of Polynucleotides by Thermal Activation. Nature 226, 364–366 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/226364a0

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