Further studies on the size and composition of the chick embryo fibroblast cytosolic DNA complex

The chick embryo fibroblast cytosolic DNA complex shows anomalous elution behaviour on agarose gel column chromatography. The indicated molecular size varies between 5 X 10(5) dalton (higher exclusion limit gels) and 1.4 X 10(6) dalton (lower exclusion limit gels). Chromatography on lower exclusion limit gels shows the [3H]thymidine labelled (DNA) complex as a sharp peak, coincident with a peak of [3H]uridine and [3H]lysine labelling and similar pulse labelling patterns for the three precursors but with DNA labelling lagging behind RNA and protein. Both cultured and uncultured cell cytosols show an A260 peak coincident with the [3H]precursor labelling peaks.