Importance of full size complementary DNA in nucleic acid hybridization

Abstract

The size of the DNA product synthesized by RNA-directed DNA polymerase (isolated from avian myeloblastosis virus) was found to be important for complementary DNA (cDNA)-mRNA hybridization reactions. Incomplete cDNA to rabbit reticulocyte globin mRNA formed poor hybrids and presumably lacked sequences needed for hybridization. The size of the cDNA synthesized was influenced by the reaction conditions used. The complementary DNA product contained 10 S material when synthesis was done at high deoxynucleoside triphosphate concentrations (greater than 50 muM) while the product was smaller than the template when synthesis was at lower concentrations. The concentration and size (oligo(dT)6 to (dT)10) of primer had little or no effect on the product size. Increasing the concentration of 10 S globin mRNA caused the cDNA product to contain more small material. The cDNA synthesized at high deoxynucleoside triphosphate concentrations was fractionated into heavy, medium, and light fractions by alkaline sucrose density centrifugation. All hybridized to globin mRNA. The larger cDNAs had a higher TM when hybridized to globin mRNA, a lower dTMP/dCMP ratio (indicating that the poly(dT) region constituted a smaller fraction of the molecule), and gave increased protection of 125I-labeled mRNA from nuclease digestion. The full size cDNA was especially useful for studying the RNA transcribed from chromatin by RNA polymerase. The complement of the 5' end of the mRNA is contained only in full size cDNA; the 5' end is the part of the mRNA first transcribed by the RNA polymerase assuming correct transcription. Thus, full size cDNA can hybridize more effectively to the short RNA transcripts that are obtained than partial cDNA. RNA transcribed from rabbit bone marrow chromatin by Escherichia coli RNA polymerase hybridized twice as efficiently to complete cDNA as it did to partial cDNA demonstrating the usefulness of full size cDNA.