Determination of the molecular weight of animal RNA viral genomes by nuclease digestions. I. Vesicular stomatitis virus and its defective T particle.

A procedure has been developed for the determination of the weight of animal RNA virus genomes using controlled nuclease digestions and computation of the moles of oligonucleotides obtained from 1 mol of RNA. Using both pancreatic RNase and RNase T(1) to digest viral RNA labeled by (3)H-uridine, (3)H-cytidine, or (3)H-guanosine, the weight of the virion RNA of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is estimated as 3.82 +/- 0.14 x 10(6) whereas that of the VSV-defective T particle is estimated as 1.23 +/- 0.04 x 10(6).