Molecular and biological properties of hamster tumor cell lines transformed with B77 virus: expression of v-src does...

Three hamster tumor cell lines (B77Hep, B77H1De and ML cl 3.1) were investigated with the aim to determine some biological and molecular properties of cells which are connected with invasive and metastatic ability. Except B77H1De all cell lines exhibited high metastatic capacity in syngeneic adult animals. Analysis of cell lines revealed a relationship between metastatic ability and growth properties (growth rate, saturation density and colony formation in soft agar). Southern blot analysis of genomic DNA samples from high metastatic cell line (B77Hep) and low metastatic (B77H1De) showed that the metastatic potential of these cell lines did not depend on the number of integrated proviral copies. Northern blot analysis was used to determine the level of mRNA encoded by v-src gene in B77Hep and B77H1De cell lines. We found a good correlation between the number of integrated proviral copies and the level of v-src gene expression in investigated cell lines, but not with their metastatic potential. No proviral sequences were found in genomic DNA isolated from ML cl 3.1 cell line. In cell lines used in this study we found differences in expression of endogenous proto-oncogenes c-myc and c-fos.