... up to 107 daltons and often is complexed with proteins forming heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs). Only about a quarter of these are converted into mature RNA, large segments are excised and the remaining segments are spliced together prior to translation. The existence of RNA was initially supported by evidence collected from prokaryotes and published during the early 1960's. Data published in two papers 1956 and 1958 by E.Volkin et al., reported on the use of 32P to follow newly synthesized RNA after bacteriophage infection in E.coli. It was found that the base composition of the newly formed radiolabelled product differed to the bacterial DNA but was similar to the phage DNA and was a precursor to the synthesis of proteins. Later experiments in the early 1960's conducted by S. Brenner et al., showed that when bacterial ribosomes present in uninfected E.coli were labelled with a heavy isotope and then infected ...

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