[Enzymatic synthesis and characterization of DNA complementary to ceruloplasmin mRNA from rat liver]

Poly(A) containing rat liver 21S RNA homogeneous in polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis under denaturing conditions and stimulating the synthesis of ceruloplasmin in a cell-free proteinsynthesizing system, was used as a template for reverse transcription in the presence of T10 primer and highly purified reverse transcriptase from avian myeloblastosis virus. The cDNA made this way was characterized by means of hybridization kinetics with mRNA, by melting of the hybrids formed and by chain length measurements. To increase the degree of representativity, the ceruloplasmin mRNA was fragmented by mild alkaline treatment, enzymatically polyadenylated and transcribed. The cDNA made was fully characterized and the kinetic complexity measured by hybridization with the mRNA was found to be equal to 2300 nucleotides as compared with the value of 3000 nucleotides is expected from gel electrophoresis data. The observed difference may indicate the presence of repeated sequences in the given mRNA. The sufficient representativitness of the synthesized cDNA and its specificity with respect to ceruloplasmin mRNA allows to use it as a molecular probe to study the ceruloplasmin gene structure.