NUCLEIC ACIDS, DECODING, ETC. 171 



First, I chose pancreatic ribonuclease, and the results are 

 shown in Table 37. 



You will notice that there are many surprising features as 

 regards this fictitious RNA. It does not look at all like anything 

 that we are familiar with. Almost one half consists of uridylic 

 acid; the pyrimidines amount to two thirds of the whole; the 

 ratio of 6-amino to 6-keto nucleotides is only 0.6. One could not 

 be farther away from an image of DNA. It turned out that one 

 could; for I chose as my next example a protein closely associated 

 with DNA in a sperm cell of which it constitutes a considerable 

 proportion. 



I took salmine, the protamine that, next to DNA, is the prin- 

 cipal component of salmon sperm (Table 38). 



This reconstructed "messenger" looks even more unreal. It 

 contains only one adenylic acid in 174 nucleotides. Even if 



TABLE 38 



SALMINE 



Number of amino acids: 58 



