Cuihua Liu

A Comparison of Chromosome Repair Kinetics in G0 and G1 Reveals that Enhanced Repair Fidelity under Noncycling Conditions Accounts for Increased Potentially Lethal Damage Repair

Abstract Potentially lethal damage (PLD) and its repair were studied in confluent human fibroblasts by analyzing the kinetics of chromosome break rejoining and misrejoining in irradiated cells that were either held in noncycling G0 phase or allowed to enter G1 phase of the cell cycle immediately after 6 Gy irradiation. Virally mediated premature chromosome condensation (PCC) methods were combined with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to study chromosomal aberrations in interphase. Flow cytometry revealed that the vast majority of cells had not yet entered S phase 15 h after release from G0. By this time some 95% of initially produced prematurely condensed chromosome breaks had rejoined, indicating that most repair processes occurred during G1. The rejoining kinetics of prematurely condensed chromosome breaks was similar for each culture condition. However, under noncycling conditions misrepair peaked at 0.55 exchanges per cell, while under cycling conditions (G1) it peaked at 1.1 exchanges per cell. At 12 h postirradiation, complex-type exchanges were sevenfold more abundant for cycling cells (G1) than for noncycling cells (G0). Since most repair in G0/G1 occurs via the non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) process, increased PLD repair may result from improved cell cycle-specific rejoining fidelity of the NHEJ pathway.

Anti-Tumor Effects of Water-Soluble Propolis on a Mouse Sarcoma Cell Line In Vivo and In Vitro

The honeybee product propolis and its extracts are known to have biological effects such as antibiotic, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor activities. This study was designed to investigate whether water-soluble propolis (WSP) inhibits tumor growth. The tumor cell line used was mouse sarcoma 180 (S-180), and its growth was determined in vitro and in vivo with exposure to different concentrations of WSP. The effects of WSP on tumor cells in vitro were evaluated by measuring the intracellular uptake of 3H-thymidine. 3H-thymidine uptake was inhibited in accordance with the concentration of WSP. The minimum concentration of WSP necessary for 3H-thymidine uptake inhibition was 1.0 microg/ml and uptake was suppressed to 88% of the level in non-treated cells at this concentration. In an experiment using tumor-bearing mice, oral administration of WSP was begun 24 hours after transplantation of S-180 cells. WSP was administered to the mice 5 times, every other day for 10 days. The doses were 320 mg/kg (10 mg/mouse) or 960 mg/kg (30 mg/mouse) of body weight. All mice were sacrificed 10 days after transplantation, and tumor growth was evaluated. The orally administered WSP significantly inhibited the growth of transplanted tumors (p < 0.05). Furthermore, histological findings revealed a significant reduction in mitotic cells and tumor invasion of the muscular tissue at both dose-levels of WSP.