Age-dependent accumulation of alkali-labile sites in DNA of post-mitotic but not in that of mitotic rat liver cells.

The amount of spontaneous damage in the DNA of rat liver cells was measured by using the alkaline elution assay. An age-related increase of approximately 700 detectable alkali-labile sites (80%) was found for rat parenchymal liver cells; cells from 6-month-old rats contained approximately 900 alkali-labile sites per cell while cells from 36-month-old rats contained approximately 1600 alkali-labile sites. In contrast to the situation with the postmitotic parenchymal liver cells, no age-related increase in the number of alkali-labile sites was found for the non-parenchymal liver cell fraction, which has a higher mitotic activity. These results support the hypothesis that aging takes place predominantly in postmitotic cells.