Abstract
Publisher Summary This chapter explores the processing of messenger RNA and the determination of its relative abundance. The ubiquity of mRNA processing as a fundamental aspect of gene expression in metazoan cells is now firmly established. In a mammalian cell, the number of copies of individual mRNA species may vary by more than four orders of magnitude. The DNA segments comprising the immunoglobulin (Ig) genes undergo rearrangement during plasma cell differentiation to form a transcriptional unit in which elements coding for the variable and constant regions and for the signal peptide are separated by intervening sequences or introns. This chapter also presents a study of the production of immunoglobulin mRNAs in mouse myeloma cells, which indicates that the high cellular content of these mRNAs is the result of an exceptionally rapid transcription rate, efficient processing and relatively high metabolic stability. The chapter also discusses studies of the total mRNA and hnRNA of mouse L cells, which point to a general correlation between size, stability, and abundancy of mRNA and relatively efficient processing for the prevalent species of mRNA.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | From Gene to Protein: Information Transfer in Normal and Abnormal Cells |
| Editors | Thomas R. Russell, Keith Brew, Harvey Faber, Julius Schultz |
| Publisher | Academic Press |
| Pages | 187-206 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-0-12-604450-8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1979 |