The complexity of poly(A)+ RNA in the alga Chlorella fusca

RNA excess hybridization with radioactively labelled complementary DNA (cDNA) was used to reveal the complexity of poly(A)+ RNA from Chlorella fusca var. vacuolata. RNA was tested from cells during photosynthetic exponential growth and during adaptation to heterotrophic growth in the dark on acetate. Both RNA populations were resolved into abundant, intermediate and rare sequence classes. Abundant sequences (200-400 copies per cell) constituted a significantly larger proportion of total poly(A)+ RNA in acetate-adapting cells than in exponentially growing autotrophic cells. Both types of RNA contained a rare sequence class of complexity consistent with a composition of about 20 000 different sequences. This indicated a substantially greater complexity of genes expressed in this alga and Euglena than in fungi and slime moulds. Heterologous hybridization, and hybridization with fractionated cDNA, showed that the majority of differences between RNA populations from exponentially growing and adapting cells were changes in relative abundance of groups of sequences, rather than presence of different sets of sequences in the two populations.