Regulation of intracellular levels of calmodulin and tubulin in normal and transformed cells.

Transformation of mammalian tissue culture cells by oncogenic viruses results in a 2-fold increase in the intracellular concentration of calmodulin quantitated by radioimmunoassay. The two pairs of companion cell lines used in this study were the Swiss mouse 3T3/simian virus 40-transformed 3T3 cells and the normal rat kidney (NRK)/Rous sarcoma virus-transformed NRK cells. The increased intracellular levels of calmodulin in the transformed cells are due to a greater increase in the rate of synthesis (3-fold) relative to the change in the rate of degradation (1.4-fold). On the other hand, no increases were observed in tubulin levels as quantitated by a colchicine-binding assay. The lack of change in tubulin concentration was accounted for by a 2-fold increase in the rate of degradation that is compensated by a similar increase in the rate of synthesis. The consequence of such changes in both transformed cell types is a 2-fold increase in the calmodulin-to-tubulin protein ratio relative to that in their nontransformed counterparts.