Enhanced hprt mutant frequency but no significant difference in mutation spectrum between a smoking and a non-smoking human population.

Recently, we have observed a small (36%), but significant, enhancement of the frequency of 6-thioguanine (6-TG)-resistant T-lymphocytes in blood from smokers. The molecular nature of 43 hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (hprt) mutant T-lymphocyte clones from nine smoking individuals was determined to investigate whether the increase in hprt mutant frequency would lead to a changed mutation spectrum. The types and distribution of hprt mutations in smokers was compared with those found in 55 6-TGr T-lymphocyte clones from 12 members of a control group of non-smokers. From this control group 25 hprt mutants were novel, whereas 31 have been described previously. Among smokers and non-smokers, a similar proportion of base substitutions (approximately 35%), mutations causing aberrant splicing (approximately 37%), frameshifts (approximately 16%) and deletions (approximately 9%) was found. In both groups, GC----AT base pair changes were found to be predominant among transitions. However, whereas all types of transversions were about equally represented in non-smokers, GC----TA transversions were not recovered among smokers. Investigation of the distribution of base substitutions over the hprt coding region showed no differences between the two groups. These data provide no clues on the nature of DNA adducts induced by smoking, which are thought to be responsible for the increased mutation frequency at the hprt locus in T-lymphocytes from smokers.