[For the reproductive death of a cell, damage to a single chromosome is sufficient]

The Chinese hamster cells V-79 were treated with BUdR during one cell cycle; after that the cells were grown in the medium without BUdR and were irradiated by longwave-UV-light at different time. The cell survival after photolysis was compared with the percentage of metaphase plates with different number of chromosomes containing BUdR. It is concluded that for cell inactivation the presence of only one destroyed chromosome (or its part) is enough.