The synthesis and migration of nuclear proteins during mitosis and differentiation of cells in rats

ABSTRACT Hooded rats were given an intraperitoneal injection of 3H-tyrosine, and killed in pairs io min, 30 min, 12 h, 36 h, 7 days, and 30 days later. A piece of skin with white growing hair, and the tongue, were taken from each animal and radioautographs were prepared. Silver grains were counted over whole nuclei and whole mitotic figures of the germinal cells and whole nuclei of differentiating cells of both tissues. It was found that the interphase nuclei have significantly more silver grains over them than the chromosomes at all stages of mitosis and there are virtually no grains over metaphase, anaphase, and early telophase chromosomes in both tissues of all the animals killed up to 36 h after the injection. The difference between the grain counts over the interphase nuclei and the chromosomes of dividing cells is at least 20-fold at 30 min in the hair matrix, at least 5-fold at 30 min in the tongue and at 36 h in both tissues. It was established that the differences observed between the radioactivities of the nuclei and chromosomes of mitotic figures are real from estimates of : the radioactivity of the cell cytoplasm, volumes of the metaphase chromosomes and interphase nuclei within 1 μ. of the photographic emulsion, and the volumes of cytoplasm separating the photographic emulsion and these structures. No protein synthesis was demonstrable in the chromosomes during metaphase, anaphase, and early telophase. Nuclear proteins leave the chromosomes during prophase and prometaphase and return to the nucleus during late telophase. The cells in the matrix and upper bulb of the growing hair follicle and those in the germinal, prickle, and granular cell layers of the tongue are in different functional states ; 30 min after injection of 3H-tyrosine they have different amounts of it in their nuclear proteins. It is suggested that the amount incorporated into each nucleus is related to the rate at which proteins are being synthesized by the cell.