We have previously described a very sensitive and efficient bacterial test designed to detect chemical carcinogens as mutagens. Chloroacetaldehyde is mutagenic in this system and is of interest because it is a possible metabolite in mammals of the large volume industrial chemicals 1,2-dichloroethane (ethylene dichloride) (3.5 billion kg/yr, U.S.) and vinyl chloride (2.5 billion kg/yr, U.S.), an...

Supercoiled plasmid DNA harboring an insert of (dG-dC)16, a sequence known to form Z-DNA upon negative supercoiling, was reacted with chloroacetaldehyde. Chloroacetaldehyde, like bromoacetaldehyde, was found to be a specific probe for detecting unpaired DNA bases in supercoiled plasmid DNA. Under torsional stress (at bacterial superhelical density), chloroacetaldehyde reacted at multiple discre...

The degradation of 1,2-dichloroethane and 2-chloroethanol by Xanthobacter autotrophicus GJ10 proceeds via chloroacetaldehyde, a reactive and potentially toxic intermediate. The organism produced at least three different aldehyde dehydrogenases, of which one is plasmid encoded. Two mutants of strain GJ10, designated GJ10M30 and GJ10M41, could no longer grow on 2-chloroethanol and were found to l...

The high fluorescence of adenine-containing compounds after reaction with chloroacetaldehyde was used to measure the adenine released from rat liver and Artemia salina ribosomes by the action of ricin A chain and gelonin, two ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) that share the same mechanism of action, consisting in the hydrolysis of the N-glycosidic bond of A-4324 of 28 S rRNA. Two methods we...

An inducible methanol dehydrogenase showing high activity with 2-chloroethanol was purified from 2-chloroethanol-grown cells of the 1,2-dichloroethane utilizing bacterium Xanthobacter autotrophicus GJ10. The enzyme consisted of a 60 kDa polypeptide that was associated with a 10 kDa polypeptide and contained pyrrolo-quinoline quinone (PQQ) as a prosthetic group. Chloroethanol-grown cells of stra...

A number of bifunctional chemical mutagens induce exocyclic DNA lesions. For example, 2-chloroacetaldehyde (CAA), a metabolite of vinyl chloride, readily reacts with single-stranded DNA to predominantly form etheno lesions. Here, we report on in vivo mutagenesis caused by CAA treatment of DNA in vitro. These experiments used partially duplex phage M13AB28 replicative form DNA in which a part of...

This work is a study of the competition between the two unimolecular reaction channels available to the vinoxy radical (CH(2)CHO), C-H fission to form H+ketene, and isomerization to the acetyl radical (CH(3)CO) followed by C-C fission to form CH(3) + CO. Chloroacetaldehyde (CH(2)ClCHO) was used as a photolytic precursor to the vinoxy radical in its ground state; photodissociation of chloroaceta...

The ability of a series of haloalkanes, haloethanols and haloacetaldehydes to induce mutations in Salmonella typhrimurium and preferentially to inhibit the growth of DNA polymerase-deficient E. coli (pol A(+)/pol A(-)) was investigated. For the haloalkanes investigated, the order of reactivities towards the E. coli pol A(+)/pol A(-), was: 1,1,2,2-tetrabromoethane > 1,1-dibromoethane > 1,1,2,2-t...