A method for isolation of undegraded free and membrane-bound ribosomes from rat lactating mammary gland.

Mammary gland polysomes are difficult to isolate from the lactating rat using methods developed for other species and tissues, most likely due to high calcium-stimulated ribonuclease activity in that tissue. A new method, utilizing ethyleneglycol-bis-(beta-aminoethylether)-N,N'-tetraacetic acid (EGTA) to bind calcium, yields highly aggregated polysomes from lactating rat mammary gland. Fresh mammary tissue is pulverized under liquid nitrogen. Free and membrane-bound polysomes are isolated by differential centrifugation in solutions containing 100 mM KCl, 100 mM MgCl2, 75 mM EGTA, 500 micrograms/ml heparin and 50 mM Tris buffer, pH 8.2 at 5 degrees C. Bound polysomes are released from the endoplasmic reticulum using Triton X-100 and deoxycholate. Polysome profiles are obtained on linear sucrose gradients and scanned at 254 nm. The method gives quantitative recovery of homogenate total RNA. To demonstrate that the method can be used to study nutritional effects on mammary gland polysome aggregation, lactating rats were fasted 22-66 h and then refed a stock diet for 71-95 h. Refeeding increased the percentage of polysomes (trimers or larger) in the bound fraction from 84 +/- 1 to 93 +/- 1% (P less than 0.001) and in the free fraction from 42 +/- 2 to 55 +/- 3% (P less than 0.001).