Concentrations of the polyamines spermidine and spermine and of glutathione have been studied in livers of normal rats and in livers and tumours of rats bearing Rd/3 sarcoma transplants. In livers of tumour-bearing rats it was found that the spermidine content increased and glutathione content diminished with increasing tumour size.
Only a few studies have been made (Rosenthal and Tabor, 1956;Raina, 1963;Janne, Raina and Siimes, 1964) of concentrations of the aliphatic polyamines spermidine (SPD) and spermine (SP) in mammalian tissues. Little is known about the origin and functions of these bases.
In the microbiological field, Tabor, Rosenthal and Tabor (1958) found that polyamines arose in cell-free extracts of E. coli through reaction of the decarboxylation product of S-adenosylmethionine with putrescine. Raina (1963) found that methionine was involved in the formation of polyamines in chick embryo and also (Raina, 1964) that I4C-labelled putrescine and methionine were incorporated into SPD and SP in several rat tissues.
It seemed possible that the concentrations of SPD and SP in rat liver might be related to the S-adenosylmethionine content (Baldessarini, 1966) which in turn would be linked with the concentrations of other sulphur-containing compounds such as methionine and the tripeptide, glutathione (GSH). In an earlier study (Neish and Rylett, 1961) some evidence was found that the GSH content of rat liver decreased during the growth of a transplantable sarcoma. It was decided to investigate this finding in greater detail and to determine whether the concentrations of rat liver SPD and SP were also influenced by tumour growth.
Animals
Adult stock albino rats aged about 3-6 months were maintained on water and Oxoid diet 86