The complexity of messenger RNA in growing or starved Tetrahymena thermophila is similar and unusually high (approximately 4.5 X 10(7) nucleotides). The complexity of nuclear RNA in growing cells (approximately 7.8 X 10(7) nucleotides) is only about 1.7 times that of mRNA. The concentration of complex class (rare) messages (approximately 53 copies/growing cell and approximately 11 copies/starved cell) is low in comparison to the size of the cell. The concentration of complex nuclear transcripts is also very low (approximately 0.7 copies/growing cell nucleus and approximately 2.6 copies/starved cell nucleus) considering that the macronucleus contains 45 to 90 copies of each single copy sequence. The complex sequence sets found on polysomes of growing and starved cells overlap about 80% and about 60% of the complex nuclear transcripts appear to be held in common. About 60% of macronuclear single copy DNA is transcribed in one or both physiological states. Although growing and starved cells have extremely different fractions of their messages loaded onto polysomes, within each cell type the complex messages in polysomal and nonpolysomal cytoplasmic fractions are indistinguishable, suggesting that exchange may occur between loaded and unloaded messages. Although T. thermophila DNA has an unusually low G + C content (23%), sequences coding for complex RNAs have base ratios similar to those of total DNA. Therefore, codon usage in Tetrahymena must be extremely biased towards adenine- and uridine-rich codons.