Abstract
THE ultra-violet irradiation of polynucleotides in solution results in the reversible formation of dimers of cyclobutane type between adjacent pyrimidine residues1. In DNA, such dimers produce important effects in many biological systems2. Beukers has also found that the presence of proflavine during irradiation at 2537 Å inhibits the formation of thymine dimers in DNA and that dimers produced in the absence of proflavine are destroyed by further irradiation in its presence3. Although Beukers was unable to show that the destruction of the dimers in DNA consists of a simple reversion to monomers, he suggested that this might be demonstrated by means of experiments with organized polymer dI.dC consisting of strands of polydeoxyinosinic acid and polydeoxycytidylic acid. Such a polymer has already been used to show that the enzymatic destruction of uracil dimers by photoreactivating enzyme in the presence of visible light consists of monomerization1.
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SETLOW, R., CARRIER, W. Formation and Destruction of Pyrimidine Dimers in Polynucleotides by Ultra-violet Irradiation in the Presence of Proflavine. Nature 213, 906–907 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1038/213906a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/213906a0
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