A Nuclease from Neurospora Crassa Conidia Specific for Single-Stranded Nucleic Acids

This report describes the purification from sonicates of Neurospora crassa conidia of a nuclease with extremely high specificity for single-stranded nucleic acids. The enzyme was purified 510-fold from streptomycin-treated sonicates in successive steps by (NH₄)₂SO₄ fractionation, acetone fractionation, by chromatography on phosphocellulose, DEAE-cellulose, Sephadex G-200 and hydroxy apatite and, finally, by preparative polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The yield of purified enzyme was 7%. Only one protein component was detected by analytical polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis at pH8.9, but, in the presence of 1% sodium dodecyl sulfate and 1% mercaptoethanol at pH7.0, one minor component (approximately 10% of the total protein, mol. wt. approximately 77,000) and one major component (mol. wt. approximately 72,000) were detected. The enzyme degraded denatured DNA rapidly but did not release any acid-soluble material from native DNA. It also did not alter the sedimentation properties of native bacteriophage T7 DNA. The only action on native DNA that was detected was a slow conversion of the superhelical form of bacteriophage S13 DNA to the open circle form. The products of a 10% digest (10% acid-soluble material) of denatured DNA contained 5′-mono-nucleotides and oligonucleotides (di- to decanucleotides) in a ratio of 3 to 1, indicating that the digestion was predominantly exonucleolytic in character.