Cytogenetic Analysis of a Chinese Hamster-Mouse Hybrid Cell

THE usefulness of cell fusion in the genetic analysis of somatic cells stems largely from two observations. First, Harris and Watkins 1 demonstrated that not only like cells, as shown by Okada 2 , but also cells of widely different types, for example, man and mouse, could be fused together by inactivated Sendai virus. Second, Weiss and Green 3 found that in man-mouse hybrid cells most of the human chromosomes were rapidly eliminated. While most of the known human linkage relation-ships have been established by classical pedigree analysis 4 , the “segregation” of chromosomes that occurs in man-mouse hybrid cells has enabled two further linkage assignments to be made: assignment of the gene controlling thymidine kinase production to an E group chromosome 5,6 and linkage of the genes controlling the production of lactate dehydrogenase B and peptidase B 7,8 .