Pyrimidine nucleotide pool changes during the cell cycle and quiescence. Pyrimidine excretion and metabolic isolation...

We have measured the pyrimidine nucleotide contents of the culture fluid, acid-soluble fraction, and acid-insoluble fraction of cultures of hamster embryo fibroblasts (third subculture) through the final two divisions of growth in culture. The cells show a growth delay between the penultimate and ultimate division periods and a concomitant biochemical synchrony of pyrimidine metabolism. The cells exhibit normal excretion of pyrimidine nucleotides beginning with the ultimate division cycle. This excretion results from the net breakdown of ribonucleic acid and a cell-regulated maximum for pyrimidine mononucleoside polyphosphate content. This upper limit for the pyrimidine nucleoside polyphosphate content is not a steady state phenomenon but rather an absence of both synthesis and utilization. The hamster embryo fibroblast exhibits a directed flow of salvage uridine for ribonucleic acid synthesis. We show that de novo synthetic uridine 5'-monophosphate also can be used for ribonucleic acid synthesis without prior entry into the cytoplasmic uridine nucleoside polyphosphate pool. During attachment and first division salvage uridine does enter the cytoplasmic nucleotide pool. The properties of the cytidine pools differ from the uridine pools in specific activity and levels of cytidine, due to turnover of the terminal C-C-A of cytoplasmic transfer ribonucleic acid and the delay in conversion of of nonradioactive de novo synthetic uridine 5'-monophosphate to cytidine 5'-triphosphate. The partial synchrony in these cultures has been used as a temporal marker of the observed events.