Ribonucleic acid synthesis in rabbit erythroid cells.

Kinetic studies on the synthesis of RNA in mature bone-marrow erythroid cells from rabbits were made by measuring the incorporation of [2-3H]adenosine into the ATP pool and RNA over periods up to 8h. By use of equations to fit the pool specific radioactivity and an equation using the same type of pool to generate the rate of linear DNA synthesis, good agreement between the pool parameters is found, provided that the ATP pool is measured in whole cell extracts, and assuming that the dATP and ATP pools equilibrate rapidly. RNA-synthesis rates were measured by using curve fits to equations developed by using the pool specific-radioactivity curves. The rate of synthesis of poly(A)-containing RNA varied in three experiments from 90 to 220mol/min per cell, with half-life of nuclear processing of 12-22 min with a mean of 16 min. Ribosomal RNA is synthesized at a rate of 70-200 mol/min per cell with an average half-life of nuclear processing of 37 min for the 18S RNA and 214 min for the 28S RNA. When the stable rRNA components are subtracted from the nRNA synthesis, the rate of nRNA synthesis is between 2 and 6fg/min per cell with an average half-life of degradation of 27 min. The rate of synthesis of poly(A)-containing RNA is 1.5-3.5% of the RNA-synthesis rates. These rates are compared with the RNA-synthesis rates found in L cells and concentrations of globin mRNA found in various erythroid-cell preparations.