Abstract
The notable effects of commercially available nucleic acids, their salts or their precursors incorporated in a culture medium on the mitotic pattern of cultured cells of Vicia faba L. under liquid shaking conditions have been reported.
The cell aggregates growing in a control medium showed only an occasional abberration. In a medium containing nucleic acids or their salts, certain of the cell aggregates revealed evidence for the occurrence of fragmentation, formation of micronuclei, the so-called “reductional groupings” and other chromosomal abberrations. In terms of percentage, these were few. One notable and well-pronounced effect was that in presence of nucleic acids or their salts in the culture medium, there was a high incidence of polyploid cells at different stages of division. When cell aggregates were incubated in a medium containing nucleic acid precursors (thymidine, cytidine or uridine), there was also a high incidence of polyploid cells in active stages of division. This was very appreciable in the cytidine and uridine-treated cultures. Giant cells and giant nuclei were also seen very frequently in these cultured cells. Certain of the giant cells were seen in metaphase stages in cytidine- and uridine-treated cultures.
From the evidence obtained in this study as well as from other workers, it is suggested that observations such as the occurrence of “reductional groupings” may not have any relationship between an additional supply of nucleic acids in a culture medium and the occurrence of reduction-division processes in somatic cells. The possibilities of using tissue culture techniques in studying mitotic processes in polyploid cells seem to be promising from this stucy.
