Physiology of rat-liver polysomes. Protein synthesis by stable polysomes

Certain qualitative aspects of protein synthesis in the livers of starved, starved-re-fed and actinomycin D-treated rats have been examined by polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis. Animals were exposed to a mixture of (14)C-labelled acids for 18-20min. and killed, and an ultrasonic extract of newly formed protein in microsomal vesicles was prepared and examined by gel electrophoresis. In normal and starved-re-fed animals, 27% of the newly synthesized protein was albumin. During starvation, when RNA synthesis was decreased, the percentage of newly formed protein as albumin rose. After actinomycin D treatment of starved-re-fed rats, when only stable messenger RNA persisted in the cytoplasm, albumin synthesis increased to 63% of the total. This finding suggested that albumin was the primary protein synthesized on stable messenger RNA.