RELATIVE RATES AT WHICH DOMINANT-LETHAL MUTATIONS AND HERITABLE TRANSLOCATIONS ARE INDUCED BY ALKYLATING CHEMICALS IN POSTMEIOTIC MALE GERM CELLS OF MICE

Walderico M. Generoso ¹, Sandra W. Huff ¹, and Katherine T. Cain ¹

¹ Biology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830

There is a close relationship between the rates at which dominant lethal mutations and heritable translocations are induced by ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) or triethylenemelamine (TEM) in male postmeiotic germ cells. This relationship does not hold for isopropyl methanesulfonate (IMS), which induced only negligible frequencies of heritable translocations at doses that induced high levels of dominant lethal mutations. Nor does IMS behave like EMS and TEM in the degree to which eggs of different stocks of females repair premutational lesions that are carried in the sperm—large differences between stocks for IMS treatment and small differences for EMS or TEM treatment. These dissimilarities between IMS and the other two alkylating chemicals are postulated to be attributable to differences in the types of lesions present at the time of repair activity and to whether or not chromosomal aberrations are already fixed prior to postfertilization pronuclear DNA synthesis.