RK bacterial test for independently measuring chemical toxicity and mutagenicity: short-term forward selection assay.

A short-term bacterial assay system for determining the mutagenic potential of environmental substances was developed and validated. Genotoxic activity was demonstrated for selected substances from 10 categories of chemical agents. The RK test results were obtained with one Escherichia coli assay strain that was transiently exposed to, and then removed from the test substance prior to the selection step for mutant cells. The RK test employs a hitherto unused short-term assay technique for selecting forward mutations in the wild-type selector strain cells. The cells of the selector strain are killed upon shifting to 42 degrees C as a consequence of thermal derepression and subsequent expression of the replication genes from an integrated 10-kilobase fragment of phage lambda. Cells that acquire mutations in the responsible killing genes are detected by their colony-forming ability at 42 degrees C. A substance is determined to be genotoxic if it is capable of increasing the forward mutation frequency for appearance of these mutant cells. Toxicity of the agent is independently evaluated by examining its effect on the viability of the selector strain at 30 degrees C, when the viral replication genes remain repressed. The flexible assay protocol enables determination of the effect of pH on mutagenic activity, the requirement for metabolic activation, and assays of nearly insoluble or highly toxic substances.