The molecular integrity of chloroplast ribosomal ribonucleic acid.

Instability of chloroplast rRNA has been observed with essentially all chloroplast RNA preparations. This paper describes experiments that show that, under normal conditions of preparation and fractionation, only the heavy chloroplast component (mol.wt. 1.1x10(6)) is unstable, the light chloroplast rRNA (mol.wt. 0.56x10(6)) and the cytoplasmic rRNA species (mol.wt. 1.3x10(6) and 0.70x10(6)) being stable. The stability of the 1.1x10(6)-mol. wt. molecule varies with different plant species, as also does the size and the number of fragments produced. Cleavages in three particular regions of the molecule are very frequent within the range of tissues studied. The 1.1x10(6)-mol.wt. rRNA is, however, stabilized by the presence of Mg(2+) during the preparation and fractionation of the RNA.