Effects of variations in nucleoside pool sizes on comparisons of the incorporation of [3H]thymidine into isolated rat liver cells.

Isolated rat liver cells have been used to measure DNA repair synthesis induced by ultraviolet light and aflatoxin. Age, sex, and diet of the rats were found to influence DNA repair in rat liver cells, as measured by [3H]thymidine uptake by the cells. These effects were found to be due to variations in the thymidine pool size and should serve to indicate that high-specific-activity thymidine (i.e., low nucleoside concentrations) is subject to artifacts generated by pool size variations.