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The assembly of protein subunits of the icosahedral RNA-containing bacterio-phage fr was studied as a function of RNA concentration, RNA size and RNA origin. RNA of certain minimal chain-length induces the assembly process, fr RNA can be replaced by other kinds of RNA, such as turnip yellow mosaic virus RNA, polyuridylic acid and even polyvinylsulfate. Certain variations in the appearance of virus-like particles have been observed when different RNA's were used.
With increasing amount of fr RNA, the formation of virus-like particles is repressed and another kind of complex is formed containing only a few protein subunits per chain of RNA.
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