Specific cleavages inflicted by venom phosphodiesterase on superhelical phiX174 DNA.

A single strand specific endonuclease, venom phosphodiesterase, acting on superhelical phiX174 DNA, inflicts at least seven specific cleavages. Six of these were located to within approximately +/-40 base-pairs by mapping with restriction endonucleases. They are at 12%, 27.4%, 42.7%, 47.5%, 76.1%, and 82.5%. All of these sites lie within regions containing runs of 16 or more base-pairs, of which 12 or more are A and T. Other similarly (A + T)-rich regions in the genome are not cleaved by the enzyme. Increasing the superhelical density of the substrate did not alter the locations of the cleavage sites. There is no correlation between the locations of the cleavage sites and the three known major promoter sites. Only two of five postulated transcription termination sites are cleaved by phosphodiesterase even though all of these terminators contain (A + T)-rich regions. The area containing the origin of viral DNA replication, which includes an (A + T)-rich sequence, is not cleaved.