A procedure for the quantitative recovery of homogeneous populations of undegraded free and bound polysomes from rat liver.

A procedure is described for the preparation of free and bound polysomes from whole homogenates of rat liver tissue. Liver is homogenized in a conventional medium containing glutathione; then after a 12-min centrifugation at 131000g, the free polysomes in the supernatant are saved, while the membrane-bound polysomes in the pellet are suspended in a mixture of ribonuclease inhibitors (cell sap, 250 mM KCl, and glutathione), homogenized in the presence of detergent (Triton X-100), centirfuged for 5 min at 1470g, decanted, and treated with deoxycholate; the polysomes in the two supernatants are harvested by centrifugation through sucrose gradients containing 250 mM KCl and cell sap. Free and bound polysomes prepared in this manner are undegraded, equally active in cell-free protein synthesis, and virtually free of ribonuclease, membranous material, glycogen, deoxycholate, completed protein, and cross-contamination. The recovery of polysomes is approximately 95% and the distribution between the free and membrane-bound state is 25 and 75%, respectively. The molecular weight profiles after sodium dodecyl sulfate-acrylamide gel electrophoresis of the polypeptides completed and released by free and bound polysomes in vitro are different, indicating that there are quantitative differences in the synthesis of various size polypeptides between the two polysome classes. The differential centrifugation procedure is rapid and reproducible, requires much less ultracentrifugation than the isopycnic technique, and provides a nearly quantitative means of separating free and bound polysomes.