Effects of thioacetamide on protein and ribonucleic acid metabolism of rat liver cells. A radioautographic study

Summary Injections of thioacetamide (T.A.) were given to rats and its effects on protein and RNA metabolism of liver cells was studied. Through the radioautographic method it was possible to observe the effects of T.A. on cytoplasm, chromatin, and nucleolus.The results show that T.A., when injected into rats, increases the amino acid incorporation into liver cell cytoplasm, chromatin, and nucleolus. This was observed by injecting either leucine-H³ or phenylalanine-H³ into rats previously treated with T.A., or by incubating liver slices with phenylalanine-H³.The effects of T.A. on RNA synthesis were studied by incubating liver slices of T.A. injected and control rats with adenine-H³. T.A. was also added to some flasks and incubated with liver slices from control and T.A. injected rats. The effect of the drug, when injected, was to increase the uptake of adenine-H³. Added to the incubation medium in the concentration of 10^–3 M, T.A. decreased the incorporation of adenine-H³. Ribonuclease digestion permitted to separate adenine-H³ incorporation into RNA, from the incorporation into DNA, which was very low in these experiments.