Flow cytometric determination of HPRT-variantsin human peripheral blood lymphocytes

• Hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase (HPRT) deficient human peripheral blood lymphocytes are usually enumerated either by the cloning assay or by the autoradiographic short-term assay. The short-term approach presented here is based on flow cytometric (FCM) scoring of 6-thioguanine (6-TG) resistant lymphocytes. HPRT-variants are enumerated on the basis of both DNA synthesis (by use of immunofluorescent detection of incorporated 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine, BrdU) and total DNA content (by propidium iodide (PI) incorporation) of proliferating cells, i.e. the cells must both be labelled with BrdU and reside in late-S or G(2) phase in order to be scored as a HPRT-variant. This approach is combined with a stringent discrimination of false-positive events, minimising occurrence of phenocopies or other non-specifically labelled cells that might falsely be scored as true HPRT-variants. The HPRT-variant frequency (V-f) found by the presented method varied between 0.8 x 10(-5) and 5.8 x 10(-5) for healthy male and female donors aged between 20 and 74 years. There was no significant gender difference in V-f. A strong linear correlation was found between HPRT-variant frequency and age, showing an increase of 0.56 x 10(-6) per year of age (r(2) = 0.62, P < 0.001). The frequencies of false-positive events found showed a mean of 0.22 x 10(-5) in comparison with a pooled mean V-f of 2.87 x 10(-5). There was no significant age effect on the frequency of false events (r(2) = = 0.15, P < 0.095). The method presented here may provide a rapid and sensitive alternative to the autoradiographic technique for the short-term enumeration of HPRT-variants.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Mikrobiologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Microbiology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

HPRT; human lymphocyte; 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine; flow cytometry; biomonitoring

Microbiology

Mikrobiologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)