Nuclear protein changes in rat hepatomas correlating with growth rate.

The nature of nuclear proteins that are soluble in 8 M urea-50 mM phosphate, pH 7.6, was compared in rat liver and Morris hepatomas, Isoelectric focusing, using carrier ampholytes for a pH gradient of 3.5 to 10, indicated that with increasing growth rate of the hepatomas there was a progressive tendency for a decrease in nonhistone nuclear proteins with isoelectric points in the range 7.5 to 8.9 and an increase in the range 5.1 to 6.7. Studies on the influence of time on the pH gradient revealed that a nonuniform drift provided a better resolution of the pH range 7.5 to 8.9 at 7 hr than at 24 hr, while the latter time for electrofocusing gave an improved resolution of the pH range 5.1 to 6.7 Polyarcylamide gel electrophoresis in a urea-acetic acid system showed that 8 M urea-50 mM phosphate; pH 7.6 extracted a small part of the histones from nuclei of both liver and hepatomas. There was less extraction of histones from the hepatoma nuclei, especially in two rapidly growing hepatomas with the most notable difference being seen in the lysine-rich H1 histone. The results suggested that in addition to qualitative or quantitative changes in nonhistone nuclear proteins in liver cancer there are alterations in the binding of histones to chromatin.