Developmental aspects of androgen-dependent mRNA from rat ventral prostate using cloned cDNA

The androgen-dependence of two mRNAs from rat ventral prostate coding for a 20000 and an 11000 dalton translation product has been investigated using complementary DNA cloned in the bacterial plasmid PBR322. One of the cloned insert DNAs from a recombinant plasmid, C-27, arrests the in vitro translation of C₂ (Peeters et al. (1980) J. Biol. Chem. 255, 7017-7023). The other cloned insert DNA arrests the translation of a glycoprotein 20000 dallons in size, with unknown function. The quantities of mRNA coding for the 20000 and 11000 dalton translation product were determined by hybridization of ³²P-labeled inserts to filter-bound total RNA or poly(A⁺)-mRNA. Castration caused a decline in both mRNAs of 250-fold over 8 days. Stimulation with androgen of 5-week castrates restored the mRNA levels to 17% of intact for the 20000 dalton translation product and 31% of intact for the 11000 dalton translation product. The quantity of the two mRNAs found in the lateral poly(A⁺)-mRNA was about 1/10 that of the ventral level and the mRNAs were not detectable in the dorsal prostate, seminal vesicle or human prostate poly(A⁺)-mRNA populations. RNA from the ventral prostates of animals 10-21 days old contained mature levels of complementary sequences, suggesting a form of developmental posttranscriptional regulation for synthesis of the polypeptides which are not synthesized in mature quantities at this stage of development (Heyns et al. (1978) Endocrinology 103, 1090-1095; Kistler et al. (1981) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 78, 737-741).