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The enzymes of the DNA synthesizing machinery constitute a group of gene products that are generally expressed co-ordinately at the G1/S boundary of the cell cycle. We have investigated how growth factors regulate the steady-state mRNA levels of two of these genes, the PCNA (proliferating cell nuclear antigen)/cyclin and the thymidine kinase genes. To detect the PCNA/cyclin mRNA, we isolated a cDNA clone from a human library. Two different cell lines were used for these studies: BALB/c3T3 cells, which are exquisitely sensitive to growth factors, and ts13 cells, a temperature-sensitive (ts) mutant of the cell cycle, which arrests in G1 at the restrictive temperature. The steady-state levels of the RNAs for these two genes under different growth conditions were also compared with the levels of histone H3 RNA which are good indicators of the fraction of cells in S phase. Both PCNA/cyclin and thymidine kinase genes share two fundamental characteristics, i.e. they are not inducible in a G1-specific ts mutant of the cell cycle at the restrictive temperature and their expression is inhibited by cycloheximide, indicating that unlike early growth-regulated genes, they require the previous expression of other growth-regulated genes. However, the two genes also show differences, the most notable being that PCNA/cyclin is inducible by epidermal growth factor alone, while thymidine kinase is not.

The proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA or cyclin) is a nuclear protein recently identified as a cofactor of DNA polymerase delta. When exponentially growing Balb/c3T3 cells are exposed to antisense oligodeoxynucleotides to PCNA, both DNA synthesis and mitosis are completely suppressed. A corresponding sense oligodeoxynucleotide has no inhibitory effects. These experiments indicate that PCNA (cyclin) is important in cellular DNA synthesis and in cell cycle progression.