Reassociation kinetics of E. coli and bovine DNA

The abscissa corresponds to reassociation time, corrected for the difference in size between the E. coli and bovine genomes.

The curve for E. coli corresponds to that expected for a collection of single-copy genes in a genome of the E. coli size— 6 bp.

The curve for bovine DNA exhibits two steps in reassociation.

The slow step corresponds to single-copy DNA (nonrepeated sequences).

The other corresponds to rapidly reassociating DNA made up of repeated sequences.

Many classes of repeated DNA are represented in this phase of the reassociation.