Different Sensitivities to External Atp in Passive Permeability of Transformed Mouse Cell Lines

Abstract

SUMMARY:External ATP causes a passive permeability change in several transformed cells but not in untransformed mouse fibroblasts.In the present experiments, the ATP-specific permeability change was observed also in B16 melanoma and L929 cells. The sensitivity to external ATP of these cells increased further when the concentration of intracellular ATP was lowered by addition of a mitochondrial inhibitor.In contrast, mouse 3T3 cells transformed by murine sarcoma virus did not respond to external ATP even when the intracellular ATP was depleted.Such differences in the ATP-sensitivity were not ascribed to the different concentrations of intracellular ATP.

Permeabilization of transformed cells in culture by external ATP

“…1). Other transformed cell lines were also found to be sensitive to external ATP, including SV3T3, 3T12, PY3T3, transformed rat kidney cells, mouse melanoma lines, Ehrlich ascites ceils, HeLa cells, L929 cells and transformed Chinese hamster ovary cells ( [47,48,57,58]; unpublished results). Most of the transformed cells respond to 100-250 /xM ATP and to much lower concentrations under certain conditions, which will be described in this review.…”

“…Sensitivity to external ATP is probably not a general property of transformed cells. As an example, 3T3 cells transformed by murine sarcoma virus do not respond [48]. Vari- Minutes Fig.…”