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Allan M. Maxam

Boston College

Publishes on RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms, Bacteriophages and microbial interactions, T-cell and B-cell Immunology. 27 papers and 26.7k citations.

27Publications
26.7kTotal Citations

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Top publicationsby citations

A new method for sequencing DNA.
Allan M. Maxam, Wendy V. Gilbert|Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|1977
Cited by 8kOpen Access

DNA can be sequenced by a chemical procedure that breaks a terminally labeled DNA molecule partially at each repetition of a base. The lengths of the labeled fragments then identify the positions of that base. We describe reactions that cleave DNA preferentially at guanines, at adenines, at cytosines and thymines equally, and at cytosines alone. When the products of these four reactions are resolved by size, by electrophoresis on a polyacrylamide gel, the DNA sequence can be read from the pattern of radioactive bands. The technique will permit sequencing of at least 100 bases from the point of labeling.

Mapping adenines, guanines, and pyrimidines in RNA
Helen Donis-Keller, Allan M. Maxam, Walter Gilbert|Nucleic Acids Research|1977
Cited by 1.4kOpen Access

The positions of adenines, guanines, and pyrimidines can be determined by partial nuclease digestion of a terminally labeles RNA molecule. In urea, at elevated temperatures, RNase T1 generates a pattern reflecting cleavage at guanines while RNase U2 cleaves only at adenine. A limited alkaline hydrolysis provides a continuum of fragments derived from breaks at every phosphodiester bond. The reaction products are electrophoretically fractionated by size in adjacent lanes of a polyacrylamide gel. An autoradiograph of the gel displays the sequence up to 100 nucleotides from the end of the molecule, although uracil cannot as yet be distinguished from cytosine. These techniques form the basis of an RNA sequencing method and are demonstrated on yeast 5.8S ribosomal RNA.

The Nucleotide Sequence of the <i>lac</i> Operator
Walter Gilbert, Allan M. Maxam|Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|1973
Cited by 485Open Access

The lac repressor protects the lac operator against digestion with deoxyribonuclease. The protected fragment is double-stranded and about 27 base-pairs long. We determined the sequence of RNA transcription copies of this fragment and present a sequence for 24 base pairs. It is: 5'--T G G A A T T G T G A G C G G A T A A C A A T T 3' 3'--A C C T T A A C A C T C G C C T A T T G T T A A 5' The sequence has 2-fold symmetry regions; the two longest are separated by one turn of the DNA double helix.

Sequence of a mouse germ-line gene for a variable region of an immunoglobulin light chain.
Susumu Tonegawa, Allan M. Maxam, Richard Tizard et al.|Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|1978
Cited by 417Open Access

We have determined the sequence of the DNA of a germ-line gene for the variable region of a mouse immunoglobulin light chain, the VlambdaII gene. The sequence confirms that the variable region gene lies on the DNA separated from the constant region. Hypervariable region codons appear in the germ-line sequence. A sequence for the hydrophobic leader, 19 amino acids that are cleaved from the amino terminus of the protein, appears near, but not continuous with, the light chain structural sequence: most of the leader sequence is separated from the rest of the gene by 93 bases of untranslated DNA.