Specific role of manganese and magnesium on RNA synthesis in rabbit bone marrow erythroid cell nuclei

Abstract

Specific roles of manganese (Mn) and magnesium (Mg) on the activities of DNA-dependent RNA polymerases I and II isolated from rabbit bone marrow erythroid cell nuclei were investigated. Three main polymerases were separated from the cell nuclei. When RNA polymerase I and Mg were added to the RNA synthesis assay mixture containing erythroid cell DNA as template, RNA transcription activity was highest, but when Mg was replaced with Mn, denatured calf thymus DNA formed a better template than erythroid cell DNA. In contrast, nucleoplasmic DNA from erythroid cell and liver DNA were the best templates to stimulate RNA transcription when RNA polymerase II and Mn were added to the assay mixture. However, if Mn was replaced with Mg, RNA synthesis activity was drastically reduced when the template was nucleoplasmic DNA of erythroid cell. RNA polymerase I and Mg synthesized GC rich RNA, whereas RNA polymerase II and Mn synthesized AU rich RNA. Sedimentation analysis showed that the molecular weights of the RNA produced by polymerase I were larger when the enzyme was activated with Mg than with Mn, whereas those of the RNA produced by polymerase II were larger with Mn than with Mg. Furthermore, RNA produced by polymerase I and Mg using chromatin as a template hybridized better with nucleolar DNA than with nucleoplasmic DNA, whereas that produced by polymerase II and Mn hybridized better with nucleoplasmic DNA than with nucleolar DNA. These results suggest that RNA synthesis is dependent on the activity of specific RNA polymerases and the presence of specific divalent cations and templates, and that the cofactor and template for RNA polymerase I are, respectively, Mg and the nucleolar DNA of cell nuclei, whereas those for RNA polymerase II are Mn and nucleoplasmic DNA.