On the role of small peptides in the regulation of RNA synthesis in Tetrahymena pyriformis.

Tetrahymena cells secrete a factor which inhibits RNA synthesis in vivo and in vitro. The factor is a relatively small peptide with a molecular weight between 300 and 1500 Daltons. Other, non-specific peptides in the broth medium or added to a chemically defined medium have a stimulatory effect on RNA synthesis in vivo and such peptides also stimulate the in vitro synthesis of RNA in a r-chromatin preparation. On the basis of these results we conclude that such extracellular small peptides compete with a specific factor which is part of the intracellular regulatory mechanism controlling the rate of RNA synthesis. The consequence of such competition is a high overproduction of ribosomal RNA in cells inoculated on peptide-rich broth media.