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. 1982 Mar 25;10(6):1895–1911. doi: 10.1093/nar/10.6.1895

No evidence for post-transcriptional control of albumin and alpha-fetoprotein gene expression in developing rat liver neoplasia.

J L Nahon, A Gal, M Frain, S Sell, J M Sala-Trepat
PMCID: PMC320579  PMID: 6176942

Abstract

Rot analysis of hybridization data using highly labeled alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and albumin (32P)cDNA probes has been used to quantitate AFP and albumin mRNA sequences in RNA preparations from different subcellular fractions of developing rat liver and Morris hepatoma 7777. In addition, size analysis of these mRNA sequences has been carried out by electrophoretic fractionation on agarose gels containing methylmercury hydroxyde and hybridization to radioactive cloned albumin and AFP cDNA probes. In all the tissues examined (fetal, newborn and adult rat liver, and hepatoma 7777) most of the albumin and AFP mRNA sequences were found associated with the polysomes as mature mRNA molecules; less than 2% of these sequences were present in the nuclear or the non polysomal cytoplasmic compartments. The number of AFP mRNA molecules was found to decrease in parallel in all the cellular compartments during rat liver development. In Morris hepatoma 7777 the content of albumin mRNA was considerably decreased in all the cellular fractions as compared to normal liver. These results demonstrate that post-transcriptional control mechanisms leading to an accumulation of non-functional mRNA molecules are not implicated in the changes of expression of albumin and AFP genes during rat liver development and neoplasia.

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Selected References

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