Length determination of the terminal redundant regions in the DNA of phage T7.

The length of the terminal redundant regions in T7 DNA has been determined by two methods. One involved the specific labeling and isolation of the redundant DNA fragment and determination of the molecular weight by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. A value of 150 +/- 10 nucleotide pairs was obtained. The other determination based on a correlation of the melting temperature of the redundant region to that of whole T7 DNA confirmed the result obtained by the first method.