Heterocyclic amine mutagenicity/carcinogenicity: influence of repair, metabolism, and structure.

Cooking, heat processing, and pyrolysis of protein-rich foods induce the formation of structurally related heterocyclic aromatic amines that have been found to be mutagenic in bacteria, mammalian cells in culture and mice. All these compounds are potent mutagens and most are active below 1 ng/plate, in Ames/Salmonella tester strain TA1538 in the presence of S9 liver microsomal preparations from rat, mouse, or hamster. They are also potent in strains TA98, TA97, moderately active in TA1537, weakly active in TA100, and virtually inactive in TA1535 and TA102. Thus, they show powerful frameshift activity in reverting specific GC-rich sequences, but do not cause base substitution mutations or revert an AT-rich sequence. They are 100-fold less active in the uvrB+, repair-proficient strain TA1978, and in the case of 2-amino-3-methylimidazo [4,5-f] quinoline (IQ), cause insertions and large deletions not seen in TA1538.