Phenotypic and genotypic analysis of rat liver epithelial cells infected with retroviral shuttle vectors

Rat liver epithelial cells (RLE) are suspected to be pluripotent hepatic stem cells that give rise to a diverse variety of liver tumors. The molecular events responsible for transformation of these cells and the diversity of the tumor phenotypes remains to be fully elucidated. We examined the genotype and phenotype of RLE cells infected with retroviral shuttle vectors carrying a neomycin resistance (neor) Ha-ras or a lacZ gene. WBneoIII, WBrasIII and WBlacZ cell lines were examined for evidence of a transformed phenotype by comparing their behavior with the parental strain (WB-344) and with WBneo-C-II and WBrasII cells. Confluent cultures of WBneo-C-II and WBrasII cells were found to contain significantly higher numbers of total cells than the other cell lines. The growth rate of WBneo-C-II and WBrasII cells were faster than that of the parental cell line. Addition of epidermal growth factor (EGF) to the medium was found to stimulate the growth rate of WBneo-C-II cells and to induce anchorage independent growth (AIG). No cell line produced tumors in nude mice (nu/nu) except WBrasII cells. Radioimmunoprecipitation studies and sequencing of the p53 exons 5–8 indicate WBneo-C-II, and WBrasII cells produce a mutant p53. Northern blot analysis showed an increased expression of c-myc mRNA in WBneo-C-II and WBrasII cells. These results demonstrate that alterations in critical growth and differentiation controlling genes have occurred in WBrasII cells which may, independent of or in conjunction with ras insertion, cause the transformed phenotype.