Cleavage of the double stranded RNA genome of killer yeast.

An enzyme splitting ribonucleic acid was isolated from the bakers yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and partially purified by differential ammonium sulfate precipitation followed by gel filtration.The enzyme cleaves killer double stranded RNA from yeast (MW 1.1 × 10(6) D) into two distinct pieces (MW 0.62 × 10(6) and 0.43 × 10(6) D) as revealed by gel electrophoresis.This enzyme thus resembles the action of restriction endonucleases used for cleaving DNA and might therefore be used in transformation experiments with double stranded RNA.