Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 1984 Apr;130(2):97-106.
doi: 10.1016/0165-1161(84)90109-2.

RK bacterial test for independently measuring chemical toxicity and mutagenicity: short-term forward selection assay

S Hayes, A Gordon, I Sadowski, C Hayes

RK bacterial test for independently measuring chemical toxicity and mutagenicity: short-term forward selection assay

S Hayes et al. Mutat Res. 1984 Apr.

Abstract

A short-term bacterial assay system for determining the mutagenic potential of environmental substances was developed and validated. Genotoxic activity was demonstrated for selected substances from 10 categories of chemical agents. The RK test results were obtained with one Escherichia coli assay strain that was transiently exposed to, and then removed from the test substance prior to the selection step for mutant cells. The RK test employs a hitherto unused short-term assay technique for selecting forward mutations in the wild-type selector strain cells. The cells of the selector strain are killed upon shifting to 42 degrees C as a consequence of thermal derepression and subsequent expression of the replication genes from an integrated 10-kilobase fragment of phage lambda. Cells that acquire mutations in the responsible killing genes are detected by their colony-forming ability at 42 degrees C. A substance is determined to be genotoxic if it is capable of increasing the forward mutation frequency for appearance of these mutant cells. Toxicity of the agent is independently evaluated by examining its effect on the viability of the selector strain at 30 degrees C, when the viral replication genes remain repressed. The flexible assay protocol enables determination of the effect of pH on mutagenic activity, the requirement for metabolic activation, and assays of nearly insoluble or highly toxic substances.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources