TY - JOUR AU - Manning, Jerry E AB - ABSTRACT The amount, by mass, of poly(A+) mRNA present in the polyribosomes of third-instar larvae of Drosophila melanogaster, and the relative contribution of the poly(A+) mRNA to the sequence complexity of total polysomal RNA, has been determined, Selective removal of poly(A+) mRNA from total polysoma1 RNA by use of either oligo-dT-cellulose, or poly (U)-sepharose affinity chromatography, revealed that only 0.15% of the mass of the polysomal RNA was present as poly(A+) mRNA. The present study shows that this RNA hybridized at saturation with 3.3% of the single-copy DNA in the Drosophila genome. After correction for asymmetric transcription and reactability of the DNA, 7.4% of the single-copy DNA in the Drosophila genome is represented in larval poly(A+) mRNA. This corresponds to 6.73 × 1O6 nucleotides of mRNA coding sequences, or approximately 5,384 diverse RNA sequences of average size 1,250 nucleotides. However, total polysomal RNA hybridizes at saturation to 10.9% of the single-copy DNA sequences. After correcting this value for asymmetric transcripti0n and tracer DNA reactability, 24% of the single-copy DNA in Drosophila is represented in total polysomal RNA. This corresponds to 2.18 × 107 nucleotides of RNA coding sequences or 17,440 diverse RNA molecules of size 1,250 nucleotides. This value is 3.2 times greater than that observed for poly(A+) mRNA, and indicates that ≃69% of the polysomal RNA sequence complexity is contributed by n0nadenylated RNA. Furthermore, if the number of different structural genes represented in total polysomal RNA is ≃1.7 × 104, then the number of genes expressed in thirdinstar larvae exceeds the number of chromomeres in Drosophila by about a factor of three. This numerology indicates that the number of chromomeres observed in polytene chromosomes does not reflect the number of structural gene sequences in the Drosophila genome. This content is only available as a PDF. © Genetics 1980 This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) TI - EVIDENCE FOR A COMPLEX CLASS OF NONADENYLATED mRNA IN DROSOPHILA JF - Genetics DO - 10.1093/genetics/95.3.673 DA - 1980-07-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/evidence-for-a-complex-class-of-nonadenylated-mrna-in-drosophila-5GRb3F0Wgs SP - 673 EP - 691 VL - 95 IS - 3 DP - DeepDyve ER -