Abstract: | The "therapeutic" doses of antibiotics, routinely applied to prevent microbial contamination in cultured cells, decrease the frequency of modal class cells and increase that of cells of other classes in sublines of Indian muntjak skin fibroblasts. In MT-subline, with 9 chromosomes in the modal class, the loss of cells with some large chromosomes occurred almost frequently. In terms of the formula of the karyotype main structural variant, this change is described as (-1-0-1-1). In M-subline, with 7 chromosomes in the modal class, the similar result is mainly achieved due to a decrease in the cell number with Y1-chromosome to be described as (0-0-0-0-1). The study of frequency of deviation from the chromosome number in the MSVK has shown that in the MT-subline, rather than in the M-subline, different chromosomes are incidentally involved in the karyotypic rearrangement. In both the sublines antibiotics induced chromosomal aberrations, primarily increasing the number of dicentrics. Preferential involvement of some chromosomes in the dicentric formation was observed. Cytogenetical parameters are more affected by antibiotics in the MT-subline. The data obtained indicate that even low concentrations of antibiotics may induce karyotypic changes in cells cultures. |