Influence of both coculture and BrdU on NOR activity of mouse, rat and human cells.

The coculture of mouse PG19 cells with human MGC cells can significantly suppress nucleolar organizer region (NORs) activity of both PG19 and MGC cells. 5'-bormodeoxyuridine (BrdU) can also significantly suppress the NOR activity of rat RC cells, human MGC and Hela cells, and mouse PG19 cells: i.e. the average number of Ag-NORs and the number of chromosomes bearing Ag-NORs per cell decrease significantly. The degree of the suppression increases with increase in both BrdU concentration in the culture medium and BrdU treatment time. The suppressed NOR activity of the PG19 cells can gradually be restored when the BrdU-treated cells are transferred into BrdU-free medium for 50 h. In PG19 cells deoxycytidine (dC) can reverse the suppression of NOR activity caused by BrdU. Coculture plus BrdU treatment suppress the NOR activity of PG19 cells more severely than BrdU treatment alone. In coculture medium containing 30 μg BrdU/ml, dC can also reverse the suppression of the NOR activity of PG19 cells but not that of the MGC cells. The degree of the reversion in the coculture plus BrdU treatment is significantly lower than that found with BrdU-treatment alone.