Protein metabolism during growth of vero cells

Protein synthesis and degradation were studied throughout a growth cycle of Vero cells. The rate of protein synthesis, measured as the rate of amino acid incorporation, reached a maximum at the mid-exponential phase and declined to 10-30% of the maximum in the stationary phase. The rate of protein degradation, measured as the release of radioactive amino acids from uniformly labelled cellular proteins, did not vary in the growth cycle. The amount of protein per cell, measured by an isotopic method, remained constant when normalized to account for the variation in the proportion of actively dividing cells in the cell population during the growth cycle. Cellular protein was determined using this method since it was found that the chemical determination of the amount of protein in the monolayer was not accurate during the early stage of the growth cycle. This was due to a significant amount of serum protein adsorbed to the cells. In this study we were able to show that, in Vero cells, protein synthetic activity is correlated with the rate of cell division, and variations in the rate of synthesis alone are sufficient to meet the changing requirements for cellular protein in a growth cycle.