Evidence against somatic mutation as a mechanism of clonal senescence.

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In order to carry out complementation tests of the somatic cell mutational theory of clonal senescence, methods were developed for the isolation of proliferating hybrid and parental tetraploid human cells which would not depend upon biochemical selection. Crosses between short-lived strains resulted in short-lived offspring and crosses between long-lived parents tended to be long-lived, in experiments involving skin fibroblast-like cells. Crosses between strains of contrasting longevities gave growth potentials approximately intermediate to those of the parentals.