期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1977
卷号:74
期号:6
页码:2451-2455
DOI:10.1073/pnas.74.6.2451
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Cultured epithelial cells from human skin generally had 3- to 30-fold more hydrocarbon-metabolizing activity than fibroblasts from skin of the same donor. This activity was constant for up to 55 days in primary culture but was lost rapidly upon physical subdivision of the cultures. Treatment of primary mixed fibroblasts and epithelial cell cultures with methylcholanthrene, but not phenanthrene, led to development of actively growing fibroblastic cultures with many heteroploid cells. Unique marker chromosomes, stable over a number of cell population doublings, were identified in several of the heteroploid cell strains. Pure cultures of fibroblasts from the same donors did not undergo heteroploid conversion in response to methylcholanthrene. Spontaneously occurring heteroploidy in logarithmic phase human fibroblasts is a rare event; thus, heteroploid conversion may be a useful marker for chemical transformation of human cells. Because methylcholanthrene seems to have little transforming effect on human skin fibroblasts, human skin epithelial cells, because of their hydrocarbon-metabolizing activity, may serve to convert methylcholanthrene from a distal to an ultimate carcinogenic form.