Macromolecular synthesis in bluetongue virus infected cells. I. Virus-specific ribonucleic acid synthesis

Abstract

Both virus-specific double-stranded and single-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA) are synthesized during infection. The single-stranded RNA is formed in a large excess of double-stranded RNA and the rate of synthesis is maximal between 10 and 13 hours after infection. The single-stranded RNA is associated with the polyribosomes and consists of components with sedimentation constants varying between 12S and 22S. Hybridization of single-stranded RNA with double-stranded RNA indicated that the single-stranded RNA is probably messenger RNA. The secondary structure of the double-stranded RNA was verified by optical rotatory dispersion.