Exogenous Deoxyribonucleoside Triphosphates

Abstract

Summary

A patient who had been accidentally irradiated in 1958 was vaccinated with polyvalent killed influenza virus in 1966. A week after he had been vaccinated 16 peripheral leukocyte cultures were made. Two cultures were made from a normal person. To 15 patient cultures, different and combinations of different deoxyribonucleotides were added 4 hr before termination of the cultures. The sixteenth patient culture (control) had no added deoxyribonucleotides. The normal person had a normal chromosomal pattern. Seventy-one of the 100 control metaphases of the sixteenth culture and seven (0.5%) of the 1451 metaphases from the patient's experimental culture were pulverized. Various (1–7%) frequencies of smaller G (Gq—) chromosomes were found in the experimental cultures. The mitotic rate was 1.17% in the control and 1.82% (range 1.4–2.68%) in the experimental cultures. The findings suggested that exogenous deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates either prevent or heal the pulverized chromosomes. The finding of frequent other chromosomal abnormalities in the experimental cultures favors the latter possibility.