Changes in tRNA levels during the induction of hemoglobin synthesis in Friend leukemia cells.

There is a three- to four-fold decrease in the content/cell of tRNAs for ten different amino acids four days after the induction of erythroid differentiation in Friend leukemia cells, consistent with the decrease in cell volume that occurs. Surprisingly, there is an approximately two-fold increase in the cellular content of each of these tRNAs between day 4 and day 6 after induction, indicating the net synthesis of tRNA late in induction. The tRNA changes affect all species and do not result in tRNA specialization for hemoglobin synthesis, as occurs in normal erythroid development. The tRNA content of imidazole-treated cells, which do not synthesize hemoglobin although they undergo other changes of erythroid differentiation, decreases initially as described above, but shows no increase from day 4 to day 6.