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The size of transcriptional units for ribosomal proteins in Escherichia coli

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Summary

An analysis of the degree to which the 55 ribosomal protein genes are clustered in polycistronic transcriptional units in E. coli is presented. Three kinetic approaches were applied:

  1. a)

    The labeling kinetics of RNA at different times after addition of rifampicin to a culture of E. coli growing in glucose minimal medium was used to calculate the distribution of transcribing RNA polymerases over different size classes of mRNA operons. The average length of transcriptional units being transcribed at a given time is about 3300 base pairs. Less than 1% of mRNA synthesis originates from transcriptional units longer than 12000 base pairs and only about 10% from units longer than 7500 base pairs. From this the upper limit of the length of ribosomal protein operons can be estimated.

  2. b)

    The rate of ribosomal protein synthesis as a fraction of the rate of total protein synthesis (αr) was measured during the cessation of mRNA synthesis and its decay after rifampicin addition. αr appears to decrease from 0.125 to 0.09 indicating that probably most ribosomal protein transcriptional units are shorter than the average.

  3. c)

    The kinetics of the rates of synthesis of individual ribosomal proteins was analysed after the release of the inhibition by rifampicin in a partially rifampicin resistant strain at 40°C. The rates of synthesis for all of the 40 ribosomal proteins tested reach half their final values at times falling in the interval 1.4–3.5 min, though for the majority it was reached between 1.6–2.6 min.

We conclude that in E. coli the ribosomal protein genes are not joined to one extraordinarily long transcriptional unit but rather that there exist several small transcriptional units comprising up to 10 ribosomal protein genes each and that there may be one larger unit containing as many as 20 cistrons.

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Author notes

  1. Kay Gulløv

    Present address: Department of Molecular Biology, University of Odense, Odense, Denmark

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Institute of Microbiology, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Søren Molin, Kaspar von Meyenburg, Kay Gulløv & Ole Maaløe

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  1. Søren Molin
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  2. Kaspar von Meyenburg
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  3. Kay Gulløv
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  4. Ole Maaløe
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Communicated by H. G. Wittmann

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Molin, S., von Meyenburg, K., Gulløv, K. et al. The size of transcriptional units for ribosomal proteins in Escherichia coli . Molec. Gen. Genet. 129, 11–26 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00269262

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00269262

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