Studies on the sonic degradation of deoxyribonucleic acid.

T7 DNA was partially degraded by x-rays, DNAase, and sonic irradiation. The molecular weight distributions were calculated from sedimentation velocity studies on the resulting preparations. Comparison with the theoretical curve derived by Montroll and Simha showed that the first two degradative methods act grossly at random, whereas sonication is a non-random process resulting in the preferential halving of the DNA molecules in solution.