Apoptosis, originally defined by specific morphological changes, is characterised biochemically by non-random cleavage of DNA. Depending on cell type, this DNA cleavage proceeds from 300 and 5Okbp fragments prior to, concomitantly with, or in the absence of l80bp integer fragmentation. Incorporation into fragmented DNA of biotin-labelled nucleotides by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) has recently become a standard flow cytometric assay for the idenacation and quantitation of apoptosis. Nucleotide incorportion is visualized using avidin-tagged fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) (Gorczyca et al.: Cancer Res 53:1945-1951; Jonker et al.: Cytometry (Suppl13)Abstr 99A, 1993). Here, we charaderise this assay further in three different haemopoietic cell lines. Drug-induced DNA damage is not i d e n a e d by the TdT assay unless it is coupled to the apoptotic response.This was demonstrated using cells in which activation of the oncogenic Abelson-encoded protein tyrosine kinase suppressed drug-induced apoptosis, but did not inhibit drug-induced DNA damage (by melphalan, hydroxyurea, or etoposide). Furthermore, the TdT assay identifies DNA fragments formed during apoptosis induced by etoposide and N-methylformamide in HL60 and MOLT-4 cells, including those high molecular weight DNA fragments formed in MOLT-4 cells which were not further cleaved to 180-2OObp integer fragments. Our results support the use of flow cytometry and the TdT assay to reliably measure apoptotic cells in heterogeneous cell samples. 0 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Key terms: Apoptosis, drug resistance, Abelson tyrosine kinase; DNA damage, non-random DNA fragmentation, TdT assay Apoptosis is now widely recognised as the predominant mode of cell death induced by anticancer agents in sensitive tumour cells (25). An increasing body of evidence demonstrates that apoptotic cell death is actively regulated ( 17,52,54); several proteins suppress apoptosis downstream of drug-induced DNA damage including Bcl-2 (20,38,51), Bcr-Abl (37), and the virally encoded proteins, adenovirus E1B (14) and v-Abl(7). The tumour suppressor gene pS3 is thought to sense DNA strand breaks and to either block cell cycle progression and/or induce apoptotic cell death (8,32,35,36,39). Being an active process, the apoptotic pathway presents opportunities for therapeutic intervention; understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the induction, and perhaps more importantly, the suppression of apoptosis in tumour cells is now a major thrust of much cancer research.The accurate measurement of apoptosis is problematic; apoptosis in vitro is generally rapid and asynchronous with final non-specific degradation of apoptotic cells (secondary necrosis). The most commonly used, the most certain, and the most laborious method for identification and quantitation of apoptosis is examination of the characteristic changes in nuclear morphology of apoptotic cells by microscopy. However, over the past S years flow cytometric assays for apoptosis have been developed; these (to a large extent) o...