Structural studies on intact and deadenylylated rabbit globin mRNA.

Publisher Summary This chapter attempts to study the structure of a purified eukaryotic mRNA. Several approaches, including the use of optical, chemical and enzymic probes, are described. These studies focus on mixed populations of α and β rabbit globin mRNA. In some instances, comparisons between intact and deadenylylated mRNA species are made to begin to assess the structural role of poly (A) sequences. The experimental information that will allow confidence in proposing structural models may not be available for many years. However, even though the results presented above are in most cases incomplete, it is possible to draw some general conclusions and to speculate concerning the structure of rabbit globin mRNA. Thermal denaturation studies imply that these subclasses melt independently and generate multiphasic denaturation curves. This phenomenon may represent the differential coexistence of specific stable secondary structures, which may be functional, with nonspecific “random” secondary structures that may be nonfunctional. Since HNA can spontaneously form poorly matched secondary structures, it is not unlikely that the long coding regions of these mRNAs may generate “random” structures in solution. Structure-specific enzymes were also used to probe the conformation of globin mRNA.