The potentiation of adenine toxicity to Chinese hamster cells by coformycin: suppression in mutants with altered regulation of purine biosynthesis or increased adenylate-deaminase activity.

When added to medium containing coformycin (2 microM or above), adenine is lethal to Chinese hamster fibroblasts at the concentration inhibiting de novo purine biosynthesis (Debatisse and Buttin, '77b). Rescue by hypoxanthine suggested that cells die of IMP starvation when the analog can turn off deamination of both adenosine and adenylate. As predicted from this hypothesis, two classes of variants resistant to the mixture of coformycin + adenine have been isolated: Class 1 variants have altered control of de novo IMP biosynthesis; they fall into two subclasses on the basis of their resistance to adenosine. Class 2 variants have a 6-10-fold increased level of AMP-deaminase (E.C.: 3.5.4.6); their growth in the selective medium is temperature-dependent, a property accounted for by the observation that cell growth in the presence of coformycin imposes a gradual thermodependent decay of specific AMP-deaminase activity in both wild-type and variant lines. This control by coformycin of AMP-deaminase activity is unaltered in mutants deficient in the four activities of adenosine-kinase. APRT, HGPRT and deoxycytidine-kinase. Most of the resistant variants are unstable and exhibit either increased or reduced resistance, depending on prolonged growth in selective or normal medium.