Buoyant density and molecular weight calculations on an Apple II microcomputer from equilibrium banding experiment on analytical ultracentrifuge.

Buoyant density is one of the non-destructive measurements of viruses, nucleic acids etc. which help in characterizing these entities in terms of their chemical composition and physical conformation. In recent years equilibrium sedimentation in CsCl buoyant density gradient has been proved to be a powerful tool for genome characterization. The method enables one to obtain information such as the absolute and the relative buoyant density of the material and its molecular weight. This communication describes a program in BASIC which calculates these parameters from the raw data obtained directly from the experiment. The program is fully interactive, user-oriented, and written keeping in view biologists and biochemists as the main users. The program has a built-in option to calculate either the absolute or the relative buoyant density and the molecular weight.