ESTROGEN STABILIZATION OF THE MESSENGER-RNA OF CHICKEN OVALBUMIN GENE IN THE CULTURED ORGAN FROM ESTROGEN INDUCED-CHICK OVIDUCT

Though estrogen prolongs the half-life of chicken ovalbumin (OVA) mRNA in vivo, little has been described about the molecular mechanism by which estrogen stabilizes the OVA mRNA. As a first trial to discover this molecular mechanism, the organ culture of estrogen-induced chick oviduct was introduced to know whether estrogen could stabilize OVA mRNA in vitro, as observed in vivo. In this culture system, the expression of egg white genes were induced and maintained by estrogen. Moreover, using a pulse-chase labeling method, we showed that estrogen stabilized the OVA mRNA, and that the half-lives of the OVA mRNA in the presence and the absence of estrogen were almost identical with those calculated from in vivo study. Thus, from this study, we concluded that this culture system had a faithful feature in egg white gene expression for the response to estrogen, and it will be useful to investigate the mechanism of estrogen-induced stabilization upon the OVA mRNA.