Mutagenic mechanism of 5-bromodeoxyuridine in Chinese hamster cells

Resistance to 6-thioguanine was induced by 5-bromodeoxyuridine (BUdR) in synchronous Chinese hamster cells. The yield of mutant colonies was not proportional to the amount of BUdR incorporated into DNA; thus mutants were not due to mispairing of BUdR with guanine during replication. Few mutants were induced until BUdR concentrations exceeded that of the intracellular thymidine triphosphate pool and mutant yield was depressed by addition of thymidine to the medium. These data suggest that BUdR exerts an allosteric effect on the DNA synthesizing system which renders it more error prone.