Figure 4.
Autoradiograms of native gels used to characterize the dimerization of tectoRNAs. Experiments were carried out in the presence of 15 mM Mg(OAc)2, as described in the Materials and Methods. The behavior of molecule 1 (left) shows two distinct bands, one for the monomer and one for the dimer. By contrast, molecule 8 (right) is typical of molecules showing fast exchange kinetics. The mobility of the dimer band of 8 varies continuously with concentration, in the concentration range where significant populations of each form exist in solution, indicating a dynamic equilibrium between monomer and dimer forms. Because of their different size, molecules 1 and 8 have different migration mobility on native polyacrylamide gels.