Sequence specificity of exonuclease III from E. coli.

The influence of the nucleotide sequence on the digestion of deoxyribonuclease from E. coli, has been investigated. It was found that the rate at which mononucleotides are released varies in a sequence dependent fashion. C-residues are cleaved off rapidly and G-residues slowly while A and T are released at an intermediate rate. Quantitative analyses of digestion experiments with synthetic DNA fragments made it possible to determine rate constants for the cleavage of several dinucleotide bonds by exonuclease III. These values were found to differ by up to a factor of 3. Summation of the differences can lead to appreciable variation in the overall rate of digestion of a DNA strand. The nucleotide specificity of exonuclease III leads to a transient appearance of a series of discrete DNA fragments intermediate in digestion and a stable set of fragments in limit digests, i.e. at the point when all DNA has become single-stranded. This property of exonuclease III needs to be taken into account for the application of the enzyme in the analysis of nucleoprotein complexes.