Mutations resistant to bromodeoxyuridine in mouse lymphoma cells selected by repeated exposure to EMS characteristics of phenotypic instability and reversion to HAT resistance by 5-azacytidine

Mutations induced by repeated EMS treatments were investigated by using mouse L5178Y cells. The frequency of TG^r mutations increased linearly with the number of EMS treatments whereas the yield of BrdUrd^r mutations showed a curvilinear dose-response curve. The BrdUrd^r frequency was roughly proportional to the square of the TG^r frequency and the results were compatible with the hypothesis that BrdUrd^r cells were induced by two mutational events within a cell. Most of the BrdUrd^r colonies isolated after 6 EMS treatments, however, were unstable. When BrdUrd^r colonies that had arisen in BrdUrd medium after 2 weeks' incubation were isolated in normal medium, the descendant cells showed a nearly normal level of thymidine incorporation and low plating efficiencies of about 1% in BrdUrd medium. In contrast, after isolation of the same colonies in BrdUrd medium, a low level of thymidine incorporation and high plating efficiencies in BrdUrd medium were observed in the descendant cells.

Reverse selection from BrdUrd^r to HAT^r was accomplished with frequencies of 10⁻⁶−10⁻³ for the descendants grown in BrdUrd medium, and AzaCyd treatment drastically increased the reversion frequency to nearly 10⁻¹. Further re-revertants from HAT^r to BrdUrd^r were also found with frequencies of 10⁻³−10⁻² without treatment. These results indicate that the initial BrdUrd^r cells did not result from inactivation of the thymidine-kinase gene but that the mode of gene expression was altered in some way.