The role of dominant visibles in mutagenicity testing.

Our results suggest that inclusion of growth retardation as one of the components of the dominant visible category will make this a useful end-point for mutational studies in which it is important to gauge the extent to which transmissible genetic damage of a particularly relevant kind is induced in mammals. These visibles are easily scored and the use of an automated weighing device would lessen subjectivity. In the present experiment with 5Gy + 5Gy spermatogonial X-irradiation (24h interval) 7309 offspring have been examined at weaning age and 23 heritable dominant visibles identified. These included 12 with growth retardation, one of which was mutant at the steel (S1) locus, as were 3-4 others of normal size. However, only 46 out of 112 offspring recorded as small were actually kept for genetic tests, while only 30 (65%) of these could be fully tested because of death or infertility in the others. Thus this experiment throws some light on the induction of presumptive dominant sub-lethals which survive until weaning age, a little-studied category. Twelve out of the 30 fully tested small mice (40%) proved to carry dominant visible mutations. If this proportion is applied to the total recorded as small then we can derive an overall total of about 45 mutations for growth retardation. It is hoped to determine the actual rate of induction of these by further work.