Preparation and characterization of liver cells made permeable to macromolecules by treatment with toluene

Isolated individual liver cells were made permeable to charged molecules and macromolecules by treatment with toluene, and the properties of such cells were examined in detail. The optimal conditions of toluene treatment, as determined by assay of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase activities, was 7 to 9% toluene for 2 min at 0 degrees. Conditions are also described for maintaining the treated cells for periods up to 1 hour. Toluene treatment was found to be as efficient as various disruptive methods for making internal enzymes accessible to exogenous substrates, and this was true for enzymes in the cytosol, membrane, or organelle fractions. Electron microscopic and biochemical examination of toluen-treated cells indicated that they were relatively intact and lost only small amounts of cellular constituents to the suspension medium. The data in this paper suggest that toluene treatment of individual cells might prove useful for studies of macromolecular synthesis in liver;