High-pressure scattering study of Artemia salina ribosomes and polysomes

The intensity has been measured of the light scattered by solutions of brine shrimp (Artemia salina) ribosomes and polysomes under hydrostatic pressures up to 2000 atm. This has given information about pressure-induced decreases in the means weight of the particles in solutions containing different concentrations of K+ and Mg2+ ions. The dissociation-association equilibrium reaction ribosome formed from large subunit + small subunit is accompanied by a volume change, --200 less than delta V less than --300 ml/mol; this delta V is discussed with relation to different models for the interaction between the ribosome subunits. The application of high pressures on polysome solutions caused also decreases of the light scattering; these were slower than in the case of ribosomes, and nonexponential. Only small decreases were found for ribosomes attached to messenger-RNA, which were obtained by incubation of polysomes with pancreatic RNAase. After fixation of the ribsomes and polysomes with formaldehyde, the light scattering remained constant with increasing pressures.