Simultaneous synthesis,translation, and storage of mRNA including histone mRNA in sea urchin eggs

The kinetics of accumulation of RNA labeled with uridine and the time course of change in the specific activity of the UTP pool were used to estimate the rate constants for synthesis and decay of RNA synthesized in unfertilized eggs of the sea urchin Lytechinus pictus. The rate of synthesis per haploid genome is similar to that in embryos. Most of the RNA is turning over with a half-life of about 5 hr, and an average of 11 pg of newly synthesized RNA accumulates at steady state. About 3.7% of the RNA in the polysomes of the egg is newly synthesized and this RNA has the heterogeneous size distribution expected for mRNA. Thus most, probably all, of the mRNA translated in the egg is also synthesized in the egg. Little, if any, of the RNA synthesized in the egg enters polysomes following fertilization. Thus the egg synthesizes a population of mRNA which is unstable and translated, but it also contains a more stable, untranslated population of previously synthesized, stored mRNA, which is translated only after fertilization. Since the two populations of mRNA code for the same abundant proteins (Brandhorst, B. P. (1976). Develop. Biol., 52, 310–317), there is a temporal separation in the metabolism and function of coexisting mRNA molecules of identical coding sequence. Among the mRNAs synthesized and translated in the egg are histone mRNAs having the same electrophoretic mobilities and rates of synthesis per genome as those synthesized in rapidly cleaving embryos. Thus the synthesis, entry into the cytoplasm, and translation of histone mRNA are not restricted to the S phase of the cell cycle or the period of cell division.