Concentrations of endogenous free amino acids in rabbit reticulocyte lysates and the effect of incubation

Amino acid analyses show that while the free amino acids found in the rabbit reticulocyte translation system do not increase during nuclease treatment or during prolonged storage, the endogenous levels of many amino acids are so high that the choice of a radioactive precursor for a translation should be based not only on the abundance of the amino acid in the translation product but also on its concentrations in the lysate preparation. It is shown that the variation of amino acid concentrations reported in this study to calculate the amount of radioactive amino acid necessary for satisfactory incorporation.