Human fibroblast interferon RNA transcripts of different sizes in poly(I).poly(C) induced cells.

Northern blot analysis reveals that total RNA from human fibroblastoid cells (MG 63) induced with poly(I).poly(C) under conditions of IFN-beta production, contains predominantly a +/- 1,200 nucleotide long poly (A) mRNA (mRNA.M) which hybridizes with a Hu IFN-beta cDNA specific probe. But hybridization with this probe also enabled the detection of a polyadenylated RNA (RNA.I) with a length of between 3.5 kb-3.8 kb, representing 0.6% of the total hybridizable cellular RNA in superinduced cells. Mapping shows that the RNA.I contains all the sequence information present in mRNA.M. Furthermore, it also hybridizes to sequences, located downstream from the IFN-beta gene up to 2.5 kb beyond its poly A attachment site, while no hybridization to fragments located upstream of the IFN-beta mRNA cap site was observable. Hence this RNA.I corresponds to a transcript that starts at the same position as the major mRNA.M but which extends up to 2.5 kb beyond the 3'-end of mRNA.M where another polyadenylation signal is located.