[Effect of monovalent cations on the ratio of RNA transcripts from DNA with different repetitive sequences in...

Using leukemic P-388 cells, it was demonstrated that alterations of the intracellular Na+/K+ ratio results in qualitative changes of newly synthesized mRNA, which manifests itself as changes in the kinetics of hybridization of heterogeneous nuclear RNA (hnRNA) with DNA. The decrease of the Na+/K+ value from 3.8:1 to 1:1 leads to inhibition of mRNA synthesis in mRNA cells hybridized at 10(3) greater than Dot greater than 10(4), but weakly affects the transcription of mRNA sequences hybridized with DNA within the Dot interval of 10(3.4)-10(3.8). A similar phenomenon is observed during hybridization of hnRNA with homogeneous fractions of unique and averagely repeating sequences of DNA. The hybridization rate constants of hnRNA synthesized by cells at different values of Na+/K+ and the limit values of hybridization (H infinity) were calculated. It was shown that the rate constants for RNA hybridization with DNA decrease by more than two orders of magnitude during the transition of the averagely repeating DNA fraction to the unique one; however, in both cases these constants give equal values for the RNA synthesized by cells at different cationic balance. The H infinity values for the RNA synthesized by cells at higher Na+ ratio appeared to be 1.5-2.0 times as high as compared with those for the RNA in the cells, in which the Na+/K+ ratio was 1:1. Thus, the monovalent cation ratio seems to exert a strong influence on the expression of sequences of different repeatedness in the genome and to play a role in the regulation of proliferative activity of the cell.