Title

A Molecular Approach to the Identification and Individualization of Human and Animal Cells in Culture: Isozyme and Allozyme Genetic Signatures

Authors

Stephen J. O'Brien, National Cancer Institute at BethesdaFollow
John E. Shannon, American Type Culture Collection
Mitchell H. Gail, National Cancer Institute at Bethesda

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-1980

Publication Title

In Vitro

Keywords

Isozyme, Cell contamination, HeLa

ISSN

0073-5655

Volume

16

Issue/No.

2

First Page

119

Last Page

135

Abstract

The electrophoretic resolution of a group of genetically monomorphic gene-enzyme systems that are developmentally and biologically ubiquitous has been used to provide a species-specific and type-specific biochemical characterization of various cultured cells. The relative mobilities of gene-enzyme systems representing nine distinct gene products from cell cultures of 25 species from Drosophila to man are presented. These isoenzymes effectively discriminate interspecies cell-to-cell contamination and almost invariably serve to identify the contaminating species. The resolution of eight polymorphic gene-enzyme systems in human cell cultures provides a virtually unique allozyme genetic signature as a monitor of intraspecies cellular contamination. The genetic signatures of 47 commonly used human cells are presented. Included in the test were seven putative HeLa (human cervical carcinoma) contaminants each of which expressed a signature identical with that of HeLa. The probability that an unrelated human cell line will have a signature identical to a typed cell is computed for each line from the genotypic frequencies at each locus in a population of cultured human cells. The gene frequencies of this cell population are comparable to the same frequencies in natural human populations. The most common human signature has a frequency (and therefore a probability) of 0.02. The majority of the 17,010 possible signatures are far less probable. A calculation of the theoretical incidence of chance matching of signatures within test groups of two or more individuals is presented. The probability of a chance match between any two randomly selected individuals is 0.004 and among five randomly selected individuals is 0.034. The allozyme genetic signature represents a definite monitor of cell identity and is presented as a standard of cell and tissue identification for a variety of biological studies.

Comments

©1980 In Vitro. All rights reserved.

NSUWorks Citation

O'Brien, Stephen J.; John E. Shannon; and Mitchell H. Gail. 1980. "A Molecular Approach to the Identification and Individualization of Human and Animal Cells in Culture: Isozyme and Allozyme Genetic Signatures." In Vitro 16, (2): 119-135. doi:10.1007/BF02831503.

ORCID ID

0000-0001-7353-8301

ResearcherID

N-1726-2015

DOI

10.1007/BF02831503