Effect of purine supplementation on the growth of salmonid cell lines in different mammalian sera.

The Chinook salmon embryo cell line, CHSE-214, grew well in fetal bovine serum (FBS) but poorly in dialyzed (d) FBS. Purines restored most but not all growth-promoting activity to dFBS, which suggests that purines account for a large portion of the dialyzable fraction's growth-promoting activity. CHSE-214 died in newborn calf serum (NCS) but grew slightly in dNCS, which suggests that the dialyzable fraction of NCS contains a toxic component(s). Little or no proliferation occurred in calf serum (CS); some took place in horse serum (HS). Porcine serum (PS) was very toxic. In all these sera except PS and HS, the purine nucleoside, inosine, significantly enhanced growth, whereas the pyrimidine nucleoside, uridine, was without effect. The other purines, hypoxanthine, adenine, adenosine and guanosine also stimulated proliferation but not as well as inosine. Inosine also enhanced the growth of the rainbow trout gonadal cell line, RTG-2. Although their morphology underwent minor alterations in medium with inosine, CHSE-214 cells could be grown indefinitely in CS and inosine as effectively as in the more expensive FBS.