Nucleic acid content of tumour cells

IT has been suggested^1,2 that the quantity of deoxypentosenucleic acid is constant for different somatic cells in the same species. On this assumption, the deoxypentosenucleic acid content of different tumour cells can be compared with that of normal cells from the same species. Many efforts have been made to compare the deoxypentosenucleic acid content of homologous normal and neoplastic tissues (see reviews in refs. 3 and 4). The results are rather divergent, several authors having reported an increase in deoxypentosenucleic acid in tumour cells, whereas others failed to observe any difference. We have found the Ehrlich ascites tumour of mice to be a good material for determinations of the average nucleic acid content of a single tumour cell^5,6 and have found the deoxypentosenucleic acid content of such cells to be about twice as great as that of normal mouse cells ^6,7.