Action of DNA polymerase I of Escherichia coli with DNA-RNA hybrids as templates.

Experiments indicating the ability of the ribo strand of a DNA-RNA template to guide polydeoxynucleotide synthesis by highly purified DNA polymerase I of E. coli (EC 2.7.7.7) are presented. With poly(rA).poly(dT) as template, poly(dT) is formed with a high efficiency, but almost no poly(dA). The specific activity of the enzyme, when tested with this template under suitable conditions, is eight times greater than that found for the poly(dA-dT) template. Single-stranded DNA fractions, with no template activity for DNA polymerase, are converted to efficient templates after their transcription by RNA polymerase. A concerted polymerization reaction, in which the action of DNA polymerase is dependent on that of RNA polymerase, can also be demonstrated with synthetic polydeoxynucleotides and single-stranded fractions of denatured DNA as templates.