Quantitative studies on in vitro transformation of hamster chondrocytes

Onge RP, Proctor MJ, Giaever G, Davis RW, Crews P, Holman TR, Lokey RS. Accelerating the discovery of biologically active small molecules using a high-throughput yeast halo assay

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a powerful model system for the study of basic eukaryotic cell biology, has been used increasingly as a screening tool for the identification of bioactive small molecules. We have developed a novel yeast toxicity screen that is easily automated and compatible with high-throughput screening robotics. The new screen is quantitative and allows inhibitory potencies to be determined, since the diffusion of the sample provides a concentration gradient and a corresponding toxicity halo. The efficacy of this new screen was illustrated by testing materials including 3104 compounds from the NCI libraries, 167 marine sponge crude extracts, and 149 crude marine-derived fungal extracts. There were 46 active compounds among the NCI set. One very active extract was selected for bioactivity-guided fractionation, resulting in the identification of crambescidin 800 as a potent antifungal agent.

Loss of a tumor suppressor gene function is correlated with downregulation of chondrocyte-specific collagen expression in Syrian hamster embryo cells

We previously described the isolation of closely related, preneoplastic Syrian hamster cell lines that have retained (supB+) or lost (supB-) the ability to suppress the anchorage-independent growth and tumorigenicity of a sarcoma cell line (BP6T) in cell hybrids. In this report, we have used differential cDNA screening to clone several genes that are expressed in supB+ cells and downregulated in supB- cells. The nontumorigenic supB+ and supB- variants are advantageous for differential cDNA cloning because multiple independent cell lines differing in their tumor suppressor activity have been isolated. Differentially expressed cDNAs were isolated and placed into one of four groups based on DNA cross-hybridization. Representative cDNAs from Groups I and II, which were expressed at relatively high levels in two independently derived supB+ cell lines (DES4 and 10W) and downregulated in the supB- and tumor cell lines, were sequenced. The DNA and predicted amino acid sequences of these genes were found to be highly homologous to the chondrocyte-specific collagens type II and type IX. In contrast to the chondrocyte-specific collagens, another collagen isoform, collagen type I, was expressed at similar levels in both supB+ and supB- cells. These results suggest that carcinogen-induced immortalization selected for chondrocyte-like cell lines from the mixed embryo cell population. As these cells progressed toward tumorigenicity, the ability to express the chondrocyte differentiation markers was lost concomitantly with the ability to suppress the tumorigenicity of the BP6T sarcoma cell line. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the supB+ tumor suppressor gene is involved in the regulation of differentiation. The identification of genes regulated by this suppressor gene may aid in its isolation.