Comparative study of ribosomal ribonucleic acid cistrons in enterobacteria and myxobacteria.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)-ribonucleic acid (RNA) hybrids are formed by Escherichia coli 16S or 23S ribosomal RNA or pulse-labeled RNA with the DNA of various species of the Enterobacteriaceae. The relative extent of hybrid formation is always greater for ribosomal RNA. These DNA-RNA hybrids have been further characterized by their stability to increasing temperature, and, in every case, the stability of pulse-labeled RNA hybrids was lower than that of the corresponding ribosomal RNA hybrids, although 16S and 23S ribosomal RNA hybrids had very similar stabilities. Therefore, ribosomal RNA showed a greater degree of apparent conservation in base sequence than pulse-labeled or messenger RNA both in the extent of cross-reaction and in the stability of hybrid structures. Similar results were obtained with Myxococcus xanthus RNA. Since in this case the base composition of the pulse-labeled or messenger RNA is richer in guanine plus cytosine than ribosomal RNA, the higher cross-reaction of ribosomal RNA is more readily attributable to conservation of base sequence in these cistrons than to its base composition. Thus, the base sequence of ribosomal RNA cistrons of bacilli, enteric bacteria, and myxobacteria is conserved relative to those of the rest of the genomes. This conservation is, however, not absolute since the stability of heterologous ribosomal RNA hybrids is always lower than that of homologous hybrids.