Attempts to Extract Infective Nucleic Acid of Rous Sarcoma Virus.

Summary Sodium deoxycholate and hot and cold phenol were used to extract nucleic acid from Rous sarcoma. The hot phenol technic in some experiments yielded a RNAse-sensitive product that caused non-transmissible focal lesions in chick fibroblast tissue cultures, but no extracts initiated a transmissible infection in tissue cultures, chicks or embry-onated eggs. The same hot and cold phenol technics did yield infective nucleic acid from West Nile. Mengo, and Semliki Forest virus preparations. Rous sarcoma virus was rapidly inactivated by deoxycholate.