Chromatin-directed Ribonucleic Acid Synthesis

Chromatin was extracted from healthy, avirulent Agrobacterium tumefaciens inoculated, and crown-gall tumor Vicia faba internodes of the same age. Chromatin from crown-gall tissue produced 5 times more RNA per 100 micrograms of DNA than chromatin from the healthy tissue. When template availability was compared using chromatin with saturating amounts of Escherichia coli RNA polymerase, chromatin from crown-gall tissue had 36% more available template than the controls. In addition, when gamma-(32)P-ATP was incorporated into the RNA synthesizing reaction mixture, with saturating amounts of E. coli RNA polymerase, there were twice as many RNA chain starts in tumor as in control tissue.