Determination of the molecular weight of bovine enterovirus RNA by nuclease digestion.

The mol. wt. of a [32P]-labelled bovine enterovirus RNA has been determined by digesting with pancreatic RNase and separating the resulting oligonucleotides using a two-stage fractionation method on DEAE-Sephadex in 7 M-urea at pH 7-6 and pH 3-0. We have estimated the number of nucleotides as 8612 plus or minus 55. This corresponds to a mol. wt. of 2-93 plus or minus 0-02 X 10-6 which is in aggrement with estimates obtained by sedimentation and gel electrophoresis techniques.