The timing of deoxyribonucleic acid synthesis in the cell cycle of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Randomly dividing cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were briefly exposed to radioactive adenine and then treated successively with dilute acid, ribonuclease, buffered formaldehyde, and NaOH. This treatment was shown to remove virtually all the radioactivity of the labelled cells other than that in DNA. Thus, in subsequent autoradiographs, only cells which had been synthesizing DNA during exposure to the precursor were labelled. The ages of these individuals within the cell cycle were estimated by measuring their sizes. This revealed that incorporation into DNA occurred almost exclusively during the first quarter of the cell cycle, starting with the initial appearance of the bud. This behaviour agreed closely with that of cells growing in artificially synchronized cultures.