RNA-linked nascent DNA fragments in Escherichia coli.

Nucleic acid that is extracted from E. coli labeled by a brief pulse of [(3)H]dT and depatured by treatment with heat, formamide, or formaldehyde bands in a region with a density higher than that of single-stranded E. coli DNA in a Cs(2)SO(4) equilibrium density gradient. If treated with alkali or RNase, it then exhibits the density of single-stranded DNA. These results suggest the presence of a short strand of RNA covalently linked to the nascent DNA. Evidence for the presence of covalently linked RNA-DNA molecules is also obtained by pulse labeling with [(3)H]U. Analyses of nascent nucleic acids from cells pulse labeled for various times, and of the molecules with different sizes, support the hypothesis that the short DNA fragments are formed by extension of even shorter RNA chains, which are synthesized on the parental DNA strands and are removed before ligation of the DNA fragments. The synthesis of the RNA segment of the RNA-DNA molecule is much less sensitive to rifampicin than is the synthesis of bulk RNA.