Action of mustard gas and other poisons on yeast cells. V. Correlation between the quantity of glutathione bound by mustard and divinyl sulfone and their effect on growth rate

✍ Scribed by Kinsey, V. Everett ;Grant, W. Morton

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1947
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 624 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0095-9898
• DOI: 10.1002/jcp.1030290304

✦ Synopsis

Recent experiments (Kinsey and Grant 111, '47) have shown that slightly over half of the available chloroethyl groups of mustard gas (H) fixed by yeast cells combine with glutathione. While the average growth rate of yeast is reduced to about 5% of normal, and eventually most of the cells die with doses of H which deplete the total intracellular glutathione by only approximately 770, the possibility exists that yeast is inordinately dependent upon a fixed concentration of this compound. It seemed of importance therefore, in attenipting to account for toxicity on the basis of depletion of glutathione to establish f o r H and other vesicants, the relation between their effect on growth rate, and the quantity of glutathione bound by them. Such a study applied to €I and divinyl sulfone (DVS) will form the basis of the present paper.

EXPERIMENTS WITH H

Methods

Relatively high concentrations (8% wet weight) of Fleischmann's Bakers' yeast were exposed to various quantities of IThe work described in this paper was done under a contract, recommended by the Committee on Medical Reswrch, between the Office of Scientific Research and Developmejit and Harvard Unirersity.