Assignment of a human genetic locus to chromosome 5 which corrects the heat sensitive lesion associated with reduced leucyl-tRNA synthetase activity in ts025Cl Chinese hamster cells.

A heat-sensitive (hs) leucyl-tRNA synthetase (leuRS) deficient CHO mutant, ts025Cl, was fused with human leukocytes and hybrids isolated in HAT medium at the nonpermissive temperature. Nineteen heat-resistant (hr) and 14 hs subclones were isolated from four independent primary hybrids and tested for the expression of 24 human isozymes which have been assigned to 17 human chromosomes. Four hr independent subclones and three hs independent subclones were analyzed for the presence of human chromosomes. A pattern of concordant segregation was noted for the hr phenotype, human hexosaminidase B (EC 3.2.1.30) and human chromosome 5. Based on these results, we have defined the human genetic locus which corrects the heat-sensitive lesion in ts025Cl as hr025Cl and have assigned this locus to human chromosome 5. Two hr hybrids exhibited leuRS activity 2.5 and 4 times the leuRS activity of ts025Cl but a wild-type level of activity was not restored. One hs hybrid had only 73% of the leuRS activity exhibited by ts025Cl while another hs hybrid had 1.8 times the leuRS activity of ts025Cl.