The quinacrine fluorescent and Giemsa banding karyotype of the rat, Rattus norvegicus, and banded chromosome analysis of transformed and malignant rat liver cell lines.

Summary Mitotic chromosomes of the rat, Rattus norvegicus , have been identified by the quinacrine mustard or trypsin-Giemsa banding technique, and a standard karyotype is proposed based on the length of the identified pairs. The banding patterns of the normal chromosomes were the same in preparations of primary cultures of Fischer rat embryos, long-term cultures of adult liver of Buffalo rats, transformed cells from the liver, and a malignant line, H4-II-E-C3. The transformed cells had 60 to 80 chromosomes, virtually all of them normal as shown by their banding patterns. The hepatoma culture had about 40 normal and 9 abnormal chromosomes per cell. Both the transformed line and the hepatoma line showed cell-to-cell variation in the number of copies of each chromosome.