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Published March 1979 | public
Journal Article

RNA complexity in developing sea urchin oocytes

Abstract

Nuclear and cytoplasmic RNAs extracted from previtellogenic and vitellogenic oocytes of the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus were characterized by hybridization reactions with radioactively labeled single-copy sea urchin DNA. The complexity of nuclear RNA from previtellogenic oocytes was 1.6 × 10^8 nucleotides. The previtellogenic nuclear RNA sequence set is included in the hnRNA of gastrula stage embryos. The nulcear RNA of vitellogenic oocytes may also contain a class of more prevalent transcripts. A single-copy [^3H]DNA tracer enriched for the sequences of mature egg RNA was reacted with cytoplasmic RNA of previtellogenic oocytes. This experiment showed that less than half of the mature egg RNA sequence set is accumulated before the onset of vitellogenesis. Therefore, a large fraction of the maternal message sequences appears in the egg during the last several weeks of oocyte development.

Additional Information

© 1979 Academic Press. Received August 23, 1978; accepted in revised form October 6, 1978. This research was supported by a grant from the NIH (Child Health and Human Development). The sea urchin maintenance system was partially equipped with funds supplied by NIH Biomedical Grant RR07003, and this culture system is maintained by Grant RR00986 from the Division of Research Resources. S.G.E. was supported by a NIH postdoctoral fellowship.

Additional details

Created:
September 15, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023