Synthesis and turnover of polysomal mRNAs in sea urchin embryos

The synthesis and turnover kinetics of polysomal mRNA have been measured in sea urchin embryos. Polysomes were isolated from stages ranging between mesenchyme blastula and late gastrula Strongylocentrotus purpuratus embryos which had been exposed to exogenous ³H-guanosine. The amount of radioactivity incorporated into messenger and ribosomal RNAs was determined separately as a function of time, and the precursor pool specific activity was measured in the same embryos. Synthesis and decay rate constants were extracted from the data by a leastsquares procedure. Per embryo, the rate of mRNA synthesis was calculated to be about 0.13 pg min^?1, while the rate of rRNA synthesis is about 0.022 pg min^?1. The newly synthesized mRNA turns over with a half-time of 5.7 hr. The data support only a single decay rate for the mRNA, but small fractions of mRNA decaying at different rates cannot be excluded. Previous studies have shown that a minor fraction of the mRNA includes the least abundant, most highly diverse set of messages (“complex class” mRNAs). To determine whether mRNAs of the complex class are synthesized and degraded at similar rates, labeled mRNA was measured in hybrids formed in mRNA excess reactions with single copy DNA. These experiments showed that complex class mRNAs represent an approximately proportional amount of the new mRNA synthesis, and turn over at the same average rate as does the bulk of the mRNA. Most of the mRNAs in the embryo polysomes are newly synthesized, rather than maternal. This statement refers both to complex class mRNAs and to prevalent mRNAs. Considering the sequence homology between embryo and oocyte mRNAs shown earlier, these results indicate that many of the same structural genes active during oogenesis are being transcribed in embryos at these stages.     

Cyclin: A protein specified by maternal mRNA in sea urchin eggs that is destroyed at each cleavage division

Cleavage in embryos of the sea urchin Arbacia punctulata consists of eight very rapid divisions that require continual protein synthesis to sustain them. This synthesis is programmed by stored maternal mRNAs, which code for three or four particularly abundant proteins whose synthesis is barely if at all detectable in the unfertilized egg. One of these proteins is destroyed every time the cells divide. Eggs of the sea urchin Lytechinus pictus and oocytes of the surf clam Spisula solidissima also contain proteins that only start to be made after fertilization and are destroyed at certain points in the cell division cycle. We propose to call these proteins the cyclins.     

'Unmasking' of stored maternal mRNAs and the activation of protein synthesis at fertilization in sea urchins

The isolation and in vitro assay of maternal mRNPs has led to differing conclusions as to whether maternal mRNAs in sea urchin eggs are in a repressed or 'masked' form. To circumvent the problems involved with in vitro approaches, we have used an in vivo assay to determine if the availability of mRNA and/or components of the translational machinery are limiting protein synthesis in the unfertilized egg. This assay involves the use of a protein synthesis elongation inhibitor to create a situation in the egg in which there is excess translational machinery available to bind mRNA. Eggs were fertilized and the rate of entry into polysomes of individual mRNAs was measured in inhibitor-treated and control embryos using 32P-labeled cDNA probes. The fraction of ribosomes in polysomes and the polysome size were also determined. The results from this in vivo approach provide strong evidence for the coactivation of both mRNAs and components of the translational machinery following fertilization. The average polysome size increases from 7.5 ribosomes per message in 15 min embryos to approximately 10.8 ribosomes in 2 h embryos. This result gives additional support to the idea that translational machinery, as well as mRNA, is activated following fertilization. We also found that individual mRNAs are recruited into polysomes with different kinetics, and that the fraction of an mRNA in polysomes in the unfertilized egg correlates with the rate at which that mRNA is recruited into polysomes following fertilization.     

Sequence complexity of heterogeneous nuclear RNA in sea urchin embryos.

The sequence complexity of heterogeneous nuclear RNA is sea urchin gastrulas was measured by RNA-driven hybridization reactions with nonrepetitive sea urchin DNA. 28.5% of the sequence complexity of the genome is represented in the nuclear RNA. This amounts to 1.74 X 10(8) nucleotides of diverse sequence, more than 10 times the nucleotide complexity of the polysomal messenger RNA extracted from sea urchin embryos at the same stage. The complex set of nuclear RNA sequences driving this hybridization reaction was shown to be the same as the rapidly labeled hnRNA, using pulse-labeled nuclear RNA as driver.     

The sea urchin stem-loop-binding protein: a maternally expressed protein that probably functions in expression of multiple classes of histone mRNA

Following the completion of oogenesis and oocyte maturation, histone mRNAs are synthesized and stored in the sea urchin egg pronucleus. Histone mRNAs are the only mRNAs that are not polyadenylated but instead end in a stem-loop which has been conserved in evolution. The 3' end binds the stem-loop-binding protein (SLBP), and SLBP is required for histone pre-mRNA processing as well as translation of the histone mRNAs. A cDNA encoding a 59 kDa sea urchin SLBP (suSLBP) has been cloned from an oocyte cDNA library. The suSLBP contains an RNA-binding domain that is similar to the RNA-binding domain found in SLBPs from other species, although there is no similarity between the rest of the suSLBP and other SLBPs. The suSLBP is present at constant levels in eggs and for the first 12 h of development. The levels of suSLBP then decline and remain at a low level for the rest of embryogenesis. The suSLBP is concentrated in the egg pronucleus and is released from the nucleus only when cells enter the first mitosis. SuSLBP expressed by in vitro translation does not bind the stem-loop RNA, suggesting that suSLBP is modified to activate RNA binding in sea urchin embryos.     

Rapid purification of biologically active individual histone messenger RNAs by hybridization to cloned DNA linked to cellulose.

We describe a rapid and simple method for the purification of biologically active messenger RNAs. The method allows the isolation in a few hours of specific mRNAs from either whole cell or polysomal RNA even if the RNA represents less than 1% of the starting molecules. We used, as a model, cloned sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) histone gene fragments linked to cellulose by the method of B. E. Noyes & G. R. Stark (1975) Cell 5, 301--310) as hybridization probes to isolate specific histone mRNAs from whole cell and polysomal RNA extracts. RNAs isolated in this manner maintain their biological activity, serving as templates for histone proteins in a wheat-germ, cell-free protein translation system. In addition, radiolabeled histone-specific RNA purified from cleavage stage sea urchin embryos, pulse labeled for short periods of time and analyzed on denaturing polyacrylamide gels, was the same size as mature histone mRNA's.     

Translation of maternal histone mRNAs in sea urchin embryos: a test of control by 5' cap methylation

Recent results have demonstrated the occurrence of mRNA cap methylation in the sea urchin embryo following fertilization. It has been suggested that this methylation event is responsible for the translational activation of maternal histone mRNAs in these embryos. We have used aphidicolin, an effective inhibitor of both DNA synthesis and cap methylation in cleavage stage sea urchin embryos, to examine the relationship between cap methylation and translation. At 5 micrograms/ml, a dose which rapidly abolishes DNA replication and blocks cleavage, we note no effect on recruitment or translation of maternal alpha-subtype histone mRNAs. This suggests that a postfertilization cap methylation event is not critical to the process of regulation of the translation of stored alpha-subtype histone mRNAs.     

Molecular cloning of five individual stage- and tissue-specific mRNA sequences from sea urchin pluteus embryos.

Five developmentally regulated sea urchin mRNA sequences which increase in abundance between the blastula and pluteus stages of development were isolated by molecular cloning of cDNA. The regulated sequences all appeared in moderately abundant mRNA molecules of pluteus cells and represented 4% of the clones tested. There were no regulated sequences detected in the 40% of the clones which hybridized to the most abundant mRNA, and the screening procedures were inadequate to detect possible regulation in the 20 to 30% of the clones presumably derived from rare-class mRNA. The reaction of 32P[cDNA] from blastula and pluteus mRNA to dots of the cloned DNAs on nitrocellulose filters indicated that the mRNAs complementary to the different cloned pluteus-specific sequences were between 3- and 47-fold more prevalent at the pluteus stage than at the blastula stage. Polyadenylated RNA from different developmental stages was transferred from electrophoretic gels to nitrocellulose filters and reacted to the different cloned sequences. The regulated mRNAs were undetectable in the RNA of 3-h embryos, became evident at the hatching blastula stage, and reached a maximum in abundance by the gastrula or pluteus stage. Certain of the clones reacted to two sizes of mRNA which did not vary coordinately with development. Transfers of RNA isolated from each of the three cell layers of pluteus embryos that were reacted to the cloned sequences revealed that two of the sequences were found in the mRNA of all three layers, two were ectoderm specific, and one was endoderm specific. Four of the regulated sequences were complementary to one or two major bands and one to at least 50 bands on Southern transfers of restriction endonuclease-digested total sea urchin DNA.