Specificity of the Complementary RNA Formed by Bacillus subtilis Infected with Bacteriophage SP8

The properties of messenger RNA (M-RNA) have been deduced from a variety of systems. Bautz (1963) has presented evidence favoring a single stranded nature of bacteriophage specific M-RNA. Genetic evidence has been obtained by Champe and Benzer (1962) with the same coliphage system suggesting that the template for useful messenger RNA synthesis is one of the two complementary bacteriophage DNA strands. However, in vitro experiments show that both strands of DNA are copied by the DNA-primed RNA polymerase (Geiduschek et al., 1961; Hurwitz, 1963). The availability of bacteriophages whose DNAs yield strands which can be fractionated and identified by their different buoyant densities has made it possible to test directly whether the RNA formed after phage infection is complementary to one or both of the strands of the bacteriophage DNA. A preliminary note has summarized our work on one of these bacteriophages, SP8, which is virulent for B. subtilis (Marmur...