“…Centrifugal fractionation of extracts from the cells as starvation proceeds reveals the steady accumulation of abnormal ribonucleoprotein particles, 'relaxed particles ', sedimenting between I 4 and 30 S (Dagley, Turnock & Wild, 1963). During methionine starvation, all the normal cellular RNA species continue to be synthesized and since few new mature ribosomes are formed the primary reason for the steady increase in the cellular RNA content is the accumulation of p16S and p23S rRNA (Adesnik & Levinthal, 1969;Chang & Irr, 1973;Dean & Sykes, 1974) which may be sub-methylated (Osawa et al, 1969). These precursor RNA forms are relatively …”