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1912 W. Jones in Jrnl. Biol. Chem. 12 34 The writer will be permitted to suggest that the nomenclature be made conformable to that which Levene and his co~workers have adopted for the nucleic acids. The term ‘tetranuclease’ indicates clearly a ferment which exerts its activity upon a tetranucleotide.

1912 A. E. Taylor Digestion & Metabolism vii. 429 Mononucleotids and tetranucleotids are definitely known; the most common of the tissue nucleic acids are tetranucleotids.

1914 Jrnl. Biol. Chem. 17 73 Yeast nucleic acid is a tetra-nucleotide and is composed of four mono-nucleotide groups.

1931 P. A. Levene & L. W. Bass Nucleic Acids ii. ix. 289 The tetranucleotide theory is the minimum molecular weight and the nucleic acid may as well be a multiple of it.

1952 Biochem. Jrnl. 52 566/1 The core is composed of the tetra- and penta-nucleotides and possibly some of the trinucleotides.

1960 L. Pickin Organization of Cells iv. 108 Simultaneously in 1948, several groups of workers independently put forward evidence throwing doubt on the old tetranucleotide hypothesis, according to which the four nitrogenous bases present: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, were combined in equimolecular proportions in a tetranucleotide. This itself was supposed to consist of four nucleotides, each bearing a molecule of one of the four bases.

1974 Nature 26 Apr. 783/1 The tetranucleotide hypothesis..asserted that DNA and RNA had a molecular weight of about 1,300, and contained one of each of the four bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine in DNA; adenine, guanine, cytosine and uracil in RNA). Because these bases were found to be present in the form of nucleotides (sugar-phosphate + base) the molecule was called a tetranucleotide.