Skip to main content
NCBI home page
The Journal of Cell Biology logoLink to The Journal of Cell Biology
. 1981 Apr 1;89(1):109–114. doi: 10.1083/jcb.89.1.109

Sea urchin tube feet: unique structures that allow a cytological and molecular approach to the study of actin and its gene expression

PMCID: PMC2111775  PMID: 6894447

Abstract

Actin is the major extractable protein component from the tube feet of four different species of sea urchin: Arbacia punctulata, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, and Diadema setosum. Actin made up as much as 60% of the total Coomassie Blue-staining material after SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and densitometer analysis. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis resolved two, and possible three, species of actin for each sea urchin of which the dominant component was analogous to the beta form in vertebrates. In a cell-free system from rabbit reticulocytes, total RNA from tube feet stimulated the synthesis of one protein that represented 80% of the total methionine incorporation, migrated with the properties characteristic of actin in a two-dimensional gel system, and on proteolysis yielded fragments identical to purified rabbit actin. The mRNAs from the tube feet of two divergent species of sea urchin, Arbacia punctulata and Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, synthesized actins differing by less than 0.02 pH unit for each isospecies 90% of the DNA copied from tube foot RNA by reverse transcriptase represented a highly abundant sequence class judged by copy DNA(cDNA)-RNA excess hybridization. At least two-thirds of this class represented a low- complexity component, with a Rot1/2 about three times that expected for actin messenger RNA. The remarkable degree of conservation of the actin protein is reflected in concomitant conservation of the protein-coding nucleotide sequences of the messenger RNA, which has allowed the use of a cDNA probe to isolate actin sequences from a human phage library.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (704.3 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Bonner W. M., Laskey R. A. A film detection method for tritium-labelled proteins and nucleic acids in polyacrylamide gels. Eur J Biochem. 1974 Jul 1;46(1):83–88. doi: 10.1111/j.1432-1033.1974.tb03599.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Carmon Y., Neuman S., Yaffe D. Synthesis of tropomyosin in myogenic cultures and in RNA-directed cell-free systems: qualitative changes in the polypeptides. Cell. 1978 Jun;14(2):393–401. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(78)90124-1. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Cleveland D. W., Fischer S. G., Kirschner M. W., Laemmli U. K. Peptide mapping by limited proteolysis in sodium dodecyl sulfate and analysis by gel electrophoresis. J Biol Chem. 1977 Feb 10;252(3):1102–1106. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Cleveland D. W., Lopata M. A., MacDonald R. J., Cowan N. J., Rutter W. J., Kirschner M. W. Number and evolutionary conservation of alpha- and beta-tubulin and cytoplasmic beta- and gamma-actin genes using specific cloned cDNA probes. Cell. 1980 May;20(1):95–105. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(80)90238-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Cohen D. M., Murphy R. A. Cellular thin filament protein contents and force generation in porcine arteries and veins. Circ Res. 1979 Nov;45(5):661–665. doi: 10.1161/01.res.45.5.661. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Friedman E. Y., Rosbash M. The syntheiss of high yields of full-length reverse transcripts of globin mRNA. Nucleic Acids Res. 1977 Oct;4(10):3455–3471. doi: 10.1093/nar/4.10.3455. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Fyrberg E. A., Kindle K. L., Davidson N., Kindle K. L. The actin genes of Drosophila: a dispersed multigene family. Cell. 1980 Feb;19(2):365–378. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(80)90511-5. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Galau G. A., Klein W. H., Davis M. M., Wold B. J., Britten R. J., Davidson E. H. Structural gene sets active in embryos and adult tissues of the sea urchin. Cell. 1976 Apr;7(4):487–505. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(76)90200-2. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Grunstein M., Schedl P., Kedes L. Sequence analysis and evolution of sea urchin (Lytechinus pictus and Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) histone H4 messenger RNAs. J Mol Biol. 1976 Jun 25;104(2):351–369. doi: 10.1016/0022-2836(76)90276-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Hereford L. M., Rosbash M. Number and distribution of polyadenylated RNA sequences in yeast. Cell. 1977 Mar;10(3):453–462. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(77)90032-0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Hunter T., Garrels J. I. Characterization of the mRNAs for alpha-, beta- and gamma-actin. Cell. 1977 Nov;12(3):767–781. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(77)90276-8. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Laemmli U. K. Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature. 1970 Aug 15;227(5259):680–685. doi: 10.1038/227680a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Laskey R. A., Mills A. D. Quantitative film detection of 3H and 14C in polyacrylamide gels by fluorography. Eur J Biochem. 1975 Aug 15;56(2):335–341. doi: 10.1111/j.1432-1033.1975.tb02238.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. McKeown M., Taylor W. C., Kindle K. L., Firtel R. A., Bender W., Davidson N. Multiple, heterogeneous actin genes in Dictyostelium. Cell. 1978 Nov;15(3):789–800. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(78)90264-7. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Noll H. Characterization of macromolecules by constant velocity sedimentation. Nature. 1967 Jul 22;215(5099):360–363. doi: 10.1038/215360a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  16. O'Farrell P. H. High resolution two-dimensional electrophoresis of proteins. J Biol Chem. 1975 May 25;250(10):4007–4021. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  17. Pearson W. R., Davidson E. H., Britten R. J. A program for least squares analysis of reassociation and hybridization data. Nucleic Acids Res. 1977 Jun;4(6):1727–1737. doi: 10.1093/nar/4.6.1727. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  18. Pelham H. R., Jackson R. J. An efficient mRNA-dependent translation system from reticulocyte lysates. Eur J Biochem. 1976 Aug 1;67(1):247–256. doi: 10.1111/j.1432-1033.1976.tb10656.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  19. Roberts B. E., Paterson B. M. Efficient translation of tobacco mosaic virus RNA and rabbit globin 9S RNA in a cell-free system from commercial wheat germ. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1973 Aug;70(8):2330–2334. doi: 10.1073/pnas.70.8.2330. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  20. Storti R. V., Horovitch S. J., Scott M. P., Rich A., Pardue M. L. Myogenesis in primary cell cultures from Drosophila melanogaster: protein synthesis and actin heterogeneity during development. Cell. 1978 Apr;13(4):589–598. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(78)90210-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  21. Strohman R. C., Moss P. S., Micou-Eastwood J., Spector D., Przybyla A., Paterson B. Messenger RNA for myosin polypeptides: isolation from single myogenic cell cultures. Cell. 1977 Feb;10(2):265–273. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(77)90220-3. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  22. Vandekerckhove J., Weber K. Mammalian cytoplasmic actins are the products of at least two genes and differ in primary structure in at least 25 identified positions from skeletal muscle actins. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1978 Mar;75(3):1106–1110. doi: 10.1073/pnas.75.3.1106. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  23. Whalen R. G., Butler-Browne G. S., Gros F. Protein synthesis and actin heterogeneity in calf muscle cells in culture. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1976 Jun;73(6):2018–2022. doi: 10.1073/pnas.73.6.2018. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  24. Woodward W. R., Ivey J. L., Herbert E. Protein synthesis with rabbit reticulocyte preparations. Methods Enzymol. 1974;30:724–731. doi: 10.1016/0076-6879(74)30069-9. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from The Journal of Cell Biology are provided here courtesy of The Rockefeller University Press

RESOURCES