Potentially lethal damage, deficient repair in X-ray-sensitive caffeine-responsive Chinese hamster cells.

Further studies are described with a radiation-sensitive clone of V79 Chinese hamster cells, designated V79-AL162/S-10. Extended postirradiation treatment with caffeine causes V79-AL162/S-10 cells to respond like repair-competent V79 cells, but both kinds of cells suffer enhanced killing by caffeine, in a similar fashion, when the postirradiation treatment period is relatively brief. Extended postirradiation treatment of repair-competent cells causes them to respond like sensitive cells without caffeine post-treatment. Treating irradiated V79-AL162/S-10 cells with hypertonic saline appreciably reduces the survival rescue which can be effected by caffeine. This latter observation leads to the inference that the sectors of damage affected by anisotonic shock and caffeine post-treatment overlap. From these and other results we propose that the DNA replicational machinery of the cell is the locus of action of these radiation damage/repair processes.