Lysozyme gene specific transcription in isolated hen oviduct nuclei.

1. Transcription from the chicken lysozyme gene domain and the density of RNA polymerase molecules was studied by incubating isolated hen oviduct nuclei in an in vitro transcription system with [alpha-32P]UTP and hybridizing the purified [32P]RNA with immobilized restriction fragments. 2. The labeled RNA hybridized most prominently to coding and flanking restriction fragments that contain repetitive sequences. 3. Relatively weak hybridization signals with a coding, single-copy, genomic fragment and cDNA fragments were detected using 5000 microCi [alpha-32P]UTP per ml of incubation mixture. 4. Flanking, non-repetitive fragments did not hybridize to the [32P]RNA. 5. The results show that transcription from repetitive sequences dominates over lysozyme gene specific transcription.