Characterization of RNA with unusual electrophoretic mobility from tissues of patients with Crohn's disease.

RNAs from tissues of patients with Crohn's disease that migrate off the diagonal in a two-dimensional gel electrophoresis system were partially characterized. One of the RNA species was a discrete cleavage product of region V2-9 of 28S rRNA; another is a conformer or variant of 5.8S rRNA; and a third is a mixture of unidentified fragments with mobility similar to that of 7S RNA. The yield of these species from resected tissue and their visualization by silver staining was very sensitive to the details of the preparative procedure. No evidence of viroid-like RNA was found within the range of molecular sizes (< 7S) that we examined.