Ionizing Radiation-Induced 6-Thioguanine-Resistant Clones in Synchronous CHO Cells

When cultured Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells are exposed to acute doses of ionizing radiation at different times during the cell division cycle, there is a characteristic cell-cycle response for radiation-induced cell killing and induced resistance to 6-thioguanine (6TG). For cell killing the sensitive periods of the cell cycle are the G1, G2, M, and early S periods, as others have reported. For mutation induction the sensitive stage is the G1 period with the maximum sensitivity near the boundary between the G1 and the S period. Cells appear to be very refractile to induction of 6TG resistance in other periods of the cell cycle. These results suggest that chromosomal rearrangements of the X chromosome are most likely to occur in the G1 period before the gene for hypoxanthine-guanine-phosphoribosyl-transferase replicates, most likely due to genetic recombination. Clones resistant to 6TG after exposure to X rays are most likely induced by a different mutagenic pathway than ones stimulated by ultraviolet (uv) or ethyl-nitrosourea treatments, since the mutation induction patterns in the cell cycle are quite different.