A consideration of the role of cell surface macromolecules in the process of viral transformation

Summary There is extensive physiological evidence implicating the cell surface as the key organelle which mediates the cell:cell interactions which underlie both normal and neoplastic growth. This information has now been supplemented with biochemical and biophysical data which indicates that surface macromolecules, in particular the heteroglycans of transformed cells, differ from those which lie at the periphery of normal cells. In the case of cells neoplastically transformed by most tumour viruses it is clear that the small virus genome (2–5×10⁶ daltons) cannot carry the total genetic information to accomodate these various biochemical modifications, if indeed they are encoded in separate genes (1). To examine the part played in transformation by cellular genes coding for surface heteroglycan formation, we have turned to a study of SV-3T3 cells (ts H6-15) which are temperature-sensitive for expression of the transformed cell phenotype (2). The data show that cells grown under conditions permissive and non-permissive for such expression exhibit the same pattern of formation of glycolipids, and of the majority of the polypeptides of the plasma membrane. There are, however, significant differences in the synthesis of some glycopeptides. A large molecular weight, trypsin-labile glycopeptide, present at the surface of untransformed fibroblasts but barely measurable in some of their virus-transformed derivatives (3), was detected, essentially at the same level, at the surface ofts H6-15 cells grown at the permissive and non-permissive temperatures. The significance of these observations is discussed. Presented in the formal symposium on Information Transfer in Eukaryotic Cells, at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Tissue Culture Association, Montreal, Quebec, June 2–5, 1975.