The regulation of RNA metabolism in suspended and reattached anchorage-dependent 3T6 fibroblasts

✍ Scribed by Bernd-Joachim Benecke; Avri Ben-Ze'ev; Sheldon Penman

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 651 KB
• Volume: 103
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9541
• DOI: 10.1002/jcp.1041030209

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Suspending anchorage‐depent fibroblasts in methocel results in marked reduction in a number of macromolecular metabolic processes. These are restored when cells make contact with a solid substrate and are allowed to spread. The response of 3T6 cells to suspension culture and their recovery upon reattachment has been extensively studied. (Benecke et al., '78; Farmer et al., '78). In these cells, message production and its turnover rate both drop abruptly when cells are suspended, while protein synthesis declines very slowly but extensively. Recovery of protein synthesis in 3T6 cells only requires surface contact and not cell spreading and proceeds rapidly, reaching control values within a few hours. The recovery of messenger RNA production in spread cells is much slower, and commences about 18 hours after cells are replated.

The present report extends the studies on RNA regulation in suspended and reattached 3T6 fibroblasts. All RNA synthesis systems respond to cell suspension. Production of small nuclear RNA species is shown to behave very similarly to the production of messenger RNA, suggesting these may be coordinately regulated. Ribosomal precursor RNA synthesis ceases promptly upon cell suspension and recovers only slowly after reattachment. The control of ribosome formation appears independent of the regulation of protein synthesis in this system. The products of polymerase III including transfer RNA, 5S RNA, and species K and L are all regulated together and show a distinct pattern of behavior unlike that of any other RNA species. Their formation is rapidly inhibited at the beginning of suspension, but then recovers to the level of control cells, even during continued suspension culture. This unusual property of polymerase III RNA species is quite different from the behavior of the small nuclear (snRNA) RNA species, which strengthens the previous suggestion that these two classes of RNA molecules are formed by different mechanisms and regulated independently.