U1, U2, and U6 small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) are associated with large nuclear RNP particles containing transcripts of an amplified gene in vivo

Nuclear ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes that contain intact transcripts of the amplified gene for CAD, the multifunctional protein that initiates UMP synthesis in Syrian hamster cells, have been released from muclei of Syrian hamster cells as large particulate structures that sediment at the 200S region in a sucrose gradient. By the technique of RNA hybridization, we have shown that U1, U2, and U6 small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) cosediment with the large RNP particles in the sucrose gradients. Autoimmune sera from systemic lupus erythematosus and mixed connective tissue disease patients, characterized as anti-(U1)RNP, have further been shown to immunoprecipitate CAD RNA along with U1 and U2 snRNAs from the fractionated nuclear 200S RNP particles. We conclude that U1, U2, and U6 snRNPs are integral constituents of the 200S RNP particles. The requirement of snRNPs for RNA processing that evidently occurs on RNP particles has been recently demonstrated. Our results thus suggest that the 200S RNPs are structurally and functionally close to the native particles on which RNA processing occurs.