Gene dosage and the expression of electrophoretic patterns in heteroploid mouse cell lines.

Spontaneously transformed mouse cell lines heterozygous for electrophoretic markers have been studied to determine the relationship between gene dosage and phenotype. It is shown that a clone with an electrophoretic pattern for glucosephosphate isomerase of three bands in a ratio of 4A:4AB:1B contains three copies of chromosome 7, which carries the gene for this enzyme. A clone from a different line with a pattern of three bands in a ratio of 1A:6AB:9B for NADP-isocitrate dehydrogenase has four copies of the chromosome carrying this gene or three copies plus a rearrangement which apparently involves this chromosome. These results show that all of the alleles for each enzyme are expressed to an equal extent in these cells.