Dose-dependent preferential binding of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to reiterated DNA of murine skin cells in culture.

The distribution of active metabolites of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons bound to reiterated or unique regions of murine DNA has been studied by a DNA-DNA renaturation technique. Murine skin cells were exposed to different doses of radioactive polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons for 24 hr; then the hydrocarbon-labeled DNA was isolated, fragmented, and denatured. Renaturation kinetics and thermal stabilities of DNA-DNA duplexes were studied. At high carcinogen doses, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon adducts seem to be distributed equally among the DNA of all reiteration frequencies. At low carcinogen doses, however, a dose-dependent preferential binding to reiterated DNA sequences occurs. An inverse linear relationship appears to exist between the enrichment of hydrocarbon adducts in reiterated DNA sequences and the logarithm of the amount of total hydrocarbon bound to DNA.