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pubmed:abstractText |
1. The 105000g supernatant fraction of rat liver catalyses the incorporation of ribonucleotides from ribonucleoside triphosphates into polyribonucleotide material. The reaction requires Mg(2+) ions and is enhanced by the addition of an ATP-generating system and RNA, ATP, UTP and CTP but not GTP are utilized in this reaction. In the case of UTP, the product is predominantly a homopolymer containing 2-3 uridine residues, and there is evidence that these may be added to the 3'-hydroxyl ends of RNA or oligoribonucleotide primers. 2. The microsome fraction of rat liver incorporates ribonucleotides from ATP, GTP, CTP and UTP into polyribonucleotide material. This reaction requires Mg(2+) ions and is enhanced slightly by the addition of an ATP-generating system, and by RNA but not DNA. Supplementation of the reaction mixture with the three complementary ribonucleoside 5'-triphosphates greatly increases the utilization of a single labelled ribonucleoside 5'-triphosphate. The optimum pH is in the range 7.0-8.5, and the reaction is strongly inhibited by inorganic pyrophosphate and to a much smaller degree by inorganic orthophosphate. It is not inhibited by actinomycin D or by deoxyribonuclease. In experiments with [(32)P]UTP in the absence of ATP, GTP and CTP, 80-90% of (32)P was recovered in UMP-2' or -3' after alkaline hydrolysis of the reaction product. When the reaction mixture was supplemented with ATP, GTP and CTP, however, about 40% of the (32)P was recovered in nucleotides other than UMP-2' or -3'. Although the reactions seem to lead predominantly to the synthesis of homopolymers, the possibility of some formation of some heteropolymer is not completely excluded.
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