The Second International Conference on Environmental Mutagens in Human Populations was held in Prague, Czech Republic, 20-25 August 1995. The conference was organized by Radim J. Sram, William W. Au, the Czech and Slovak Society of Environmental Mutagenesis, the Czechoslovak Biological Society, the Environmental Mutagen Society, the European Environmental Mutagen Society, the International Asso...

The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer multicenter Euroscan trial was set up to prevent the occurrence of second primary tumors in the upper aerodigestive and respiratory tract in patients cured for early stage head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. One randomized group of patients receive daily N-acetylcysteine, an antioxidant that may be protective especially in the ea...

A new method is developed for estimating rates of somatic mutation in vivo. The stop-enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) transgenic mouse carries multiple copies of an EGFP gene with a premature stop codon. The gene can revert to a functional form via point mutations. Mice treated with a potent mutagen, N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU), and mice treated with a vehicle alone are assayed for mut...

In our Fundamentals of Genetics lab, students perform a wide variety of labs to reinforce and extend the topics covered in lecture. I developed an active-learning lab to augment the lecture topic of mutagenesis. In this lab exercise, students determine if a compound they bring from home is a mutagen. Students are required to read extensive background material, perform research to find a potenti...

In an attempt to obtain an industrial strain with higher yield of wanlongmycin, the wild strain Streptomyces griseovariabilis GAAS2507 was mutated by a novel mutagen, nitrogen ion beam with energy of 20 kilo electron volts (KeV) and dose ranging from 7.80 x 10 to 2.86 x 10 ions/cm. One mutant strain WN939 was obtained. Its yield of wanlongmycin reached 271.24 μg/mL, which was 82.10% higher than...

This study describes a correlation between cellular DNA repair capacity and the frequency of mutagen-induced in vitro chromosomal breaks in selected lymphoblastoid cell lines. Two assays, host cell reactivation (HCR) assay for measuring cellular DNA repair capacity and in vitro mutagen sensitivity assay, have recently been shown to be useful biomarkers for such susceptibility. Increased in vitr...

Corresponding Author: Antonio Biondi, MD; e-mail: [email protected] Dear Editor, Each year, tens of millions of people around the world are diagnosed with cancer, and more than half of them die from it1. The causes of cancers are understood to be mainly tobacco smoking – especially for lung cancer2-4, dietary factors, and infection/chronic inflammation, each of these accounting for up to one thir...

BACKGROUND The mutagen sensitivity assay has been well established and widely used as a good independent risk predictor for developing cancers. Although endometriosis is considered a benign disorder, it exhibits several features similar to malignancy. The objectives of this study were to evaluate whether mutagen sensitivity can predict the risk of endometriosis development. METHODS The subjec...

The associations between lung cancer risk, mutagen sensitivity (a marker of cancer susceptibility), and a putative lung carcinogen, wood dust, were assessed in a hospital-based case-control study. There were 113 African -American and 67 Mexican-American cases with newly diagnosed, previously untreated lung cancer and 270 controls, frequency-matched on age, ethnicity, and sex. Mutagen sensitivit...

Mutagenic effectiveness and efficiency of gamma rays sodium azide and their combination treatments were studied in the genotype of urdben variety T9. The usefulness of any mutagen in plant breeding depends not only on its effectiveness but also upon its efficiency. Mutagenic effectiveness is a measure of the frequency of mutations induced by unit mutagen dose, whereas mutagenic efficiency is me...