ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE MUTANTS OF CHINESE HAMSTER SOMATIC CELLS RESISTANT TO ALLYL ALCOHOL

Jean-Paul Thirion ¹ and Brian Talbot ¹

¹ Département de Microbiologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, P.Q., Canada JIH 5N4

Alcohol dehydrogenase (alcohol: NAD oxidoreductase, E.C. 1.1.1.1.) mutants of Chinese hamster somatic cells were isolated as resistant to allyl alcohol (ALL^R). The ALL^R phenotypes of the mutant clones were reproducible with high fidelity and stable over long intervals of growth in the absence of the selecting drug. Several mutants, Adh-1, Adh-2, Adh-9 and Adh-13, resistant to allyl alcohol were characterized. They have between 15 and 40% of the alcohol dehydrogenase activity of the wild-type cell lines. Cell-cell hybridization experiments using Adh-1 and wild-type Chinese hamster cells indicate that resistance to allyl alcohol is recessive to the wild-type allele. This phenotype is therefore a useful marker to analyze gene segregation of somatic cell mutations and to study the expression of the genes involved in the metabolism of ethanol in mammalian cells.