Characteristics of a new rapidly proliferating rabbit cell line.

Abstract

A new tissue culture cell line (Calg-ARLC) has been established from an explant culture of adult rabbit lung. The Calg-ARLC line has been characterized with respect to morphology, chromosome constitution, tissue culture requirements, proliferative capacity, cell cycle, attainable synchrony, radioisotopically labeled precursor incorporation into nucleic acids and protein, and radioisotope sensitivity. The cells are fibroblast-like in appearance with a stabilized heteroploid chromosomal modal number of 35. They grow exponentially from high split ratios in several commercially available defined media with a generation time of 12 hr and are easily synchronized. Although sensitive to some isotopically labeled precursors, high specific activity nucleic acids have been isolated. The ARLC line is especially useful for the isolation of high specific activity nucleic acids and proteins of rabbit origin. The Calg-ARLC line should be invaluable in the fractionation of reiterated DNA sequences since no very rapidly reassociating DNA sequences such as those found in mouse are evident.