Differential hormonal responsiveness of the ovalbumin gene and its pseudogenes in the chick oviduct.

We describe the isolation of recombinant phages from a chicken gene library which contain two genes designated X and Y. These two genes are linked to the ovalbumin gene (OV) in the order 5'-X-Y-ovalbumin-3' [Royal, A., Garapin, A., Cami, B., Perrin, F., Mandel, J. L., LeMeur, M., Bregegegre, F., Gannon, F, LePennec, J. P., Chambon, P., & Kourilsky, P. (1979) Nature (London) 279, 125-132]. Both genes contain multiple intervening sequences and share limited sequence homology with the authentic ovalbumin gene but are expressed in oviduct cells at different levels. X and Y hybridization probes were prepared in order to study the expression and the relative hormonal responsiveness of these three genes in chicken oviduct. The sequence specificity of the probes was demonstrated by Southern hybridization assays. Northern hybridization studies using the X and Y gene probes indicated the presence of putative precursor molecules in stimulated oviduct ribonucleic acid preparations, which differ in size from those observed for ovalbumin. R0t analysis has demonstrated that, similar to the ovalbumin gene, the level of X and Y gene transcripts is increased by the steroid hormone estrogen, but to varying degrees. The extent of hormonal responsiveness of the three closely related genes is in the order (normalized) relative to ovalbumin of OV:Y:X congruent to 100:10:1. Pulse-labeling studies of these three closely linked genes suggest that in estrogen-stimulated oviduct, the markedly different steady-state levels of the X, Y, and ovalbumin gene transcripts reflect their differential transcription rates.