Induction and repair of lethal and oncogenic lesions and their relationship to cytogenetic changes in UV-irradiated mouse 10T1/2 cells

While bacterial system is valuable for the pragmatic purpose of screening potential environmental carcinogens, the fundamental difference between prokaryotes and mammalian cells warrant caution against the use of bacterial mutagenic mechanisms to explain the oncogenic process in mammalian cells. The 10 T1/2 cells exposed to UV light in the plateau phase and subcultured immediately to low density to assay for clonogenic survival were extremely resistant to the cytotoxic effect of UV light. Purely physical considerations such as the increased thickness of plateau phase cells and the increased cytoplasmic shielding of UV light from the nuclei were insufficient to account for this unusual resistance. The effect of caffeine on the repair processes in UV-irradiated mammalian cells appears to be exerted during the first DNA synthetic phase after the UV exposure. The daughter DNA synthesized on a UV-irradiated template is of reduced molecular weight. 10 T1/2 cells were exposed in the log phase of growth to UV light, and then they were cultured for the next 48 hours in the complete growth medium containing the specific concentration of caffeine. Parallel experiments were performed, in which cells were exposed for 48 hours to caffeine only with no prior exposure to UV light. It was found that caffeine did not potentiate the transformation by UV light. Caffeine alone induced sister chromatid exchange (SCE), whereas the caffeine given after UV light had no effect. The class of UV-induced lesions which induce SCE also leads to malignant transformation. (Yamashita, S.)