抄録
A spectrophotometric study on the in vitro metachromasia of thionin caused by different types of nucleic acids showed that non-disaggregated DNA is more strongly metachromatic than PNA in either direction. Thus, both the blue color (α) taken at high molar ratios of nucleic acid P to thionin and the reddish purple color (β) taken at lower ratios are more intensive with DNA than with PNA. The difference seems, at least in part, to be due to the difference in “molecular” weight of nucleic acids, since the intensity of metachromasia caused by disaggregated DNA is intermediate between PNA and non-disaggregated DNA. From the molar ratio of dye to nucleic acid P which gives the extreme β-color, the stoichiometry of the reaction was estimated to be one molecule of dye per nucleic acid P for every type of nucleic acids. The cytochemical implications of these findings were discussed briefly.
It is our great pleasure to express our gratitude to Prof. Juntaro Kamahora of this department for his warm encouragement to this work.
