Mechanism of heat induction of albumin in early embryonic rat liver

Albumin is an adult liver specific protein whose induction in rats starts at day 19 or 20 of normal gestation. Our studies on the effect of heat stress on embryonic development showed premature induction of a 67 kDa protein at day 12 or 13 in embryonic liver cells, in addition to the induction of usual heat shock proteins. Immunoblotting with anti-albumin antibody confirmed the prematurely induced protein to be albumin. RNA dot blot showed that albumin induction upon heat shock is regulated at transcriptional level and northern blot confirmed the size of heat induced albumin transcript to be similar to the constitutively induced albumin RNA transcript.