Purification and properties of biologically active messenger RNA for a myeloma light chain.

A cell-free system derived from Krebs II ascites tumor has been used to assay biologically active mRNA for myeloma (MOPC-41) light chain during its purification by oligothymidylate-cellulose chromatography and sucrose gradient centrifugation. The purified mRNA directs the synthesis of a product that yields tryptic peptides corresponding to those derived from authentic myeloma protein and that forms a specific immunoprecipitate with antibody directed against the MOPC-41 protein. The fact that the light-chain mRNA anneals to oligothymidylic acid-cellulose suggests that it, like several other eukaryotic mRNAs, contains a region rich in adenylic acid residues. The most active fractions of light-chain mRNA, representing about 0.1% of the RNA originally extracted from membrane-bound myeloma polysomes, sediment as a discrete peak with an s(20,w) of about 13, roughly corresponding to an RNA molecule containing 850 bases. The results suggest that the light-chain mRNA is monocistronic and that it contains about 200 more bases than would be necessary to encode the variable and constant regions of a single light-chain molecule.