Sequence studies of poliovirus RNA. IV. Nucleotide sequence complexities of poliovirus type 1, type 2 and two type 1 defective interfering particles RNAs, and fingerprint of the poliovirus type 3 genome.

The 32P-labelled genomes of poliovirus type 1, 2 and 3 have been digested with RNase T1 and the products separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. All three fingerprints differ in the separation pattern of the large oligonucleotides. The molar yields of the large RNase T1-resistant oligonucleotides of type 1 and type 2 RNA of poliovirus RNA are close to one. By comparing the yields of these oligonucleotides to the amount of RNA from which they originated, the chain length of type 1 poliovirus RNA was found to be 7851 +/- 567 nucleotides (mol. wt. 2.66 +/- 0.19 x 10(6) and that of poliovirus type 2, 8181 +/- 578 nucleotides (mol. wt. 2.77 +/- 0.19 x 10(6). The chain length of two defective interfering particle (DI) RNAs of poliovirus type 1 were determined to be 7042 +/- 999 nucleotides for DI(1) and 6639 +/- 674 nucleotides for DI(2).