title: Decrease in cellular replicative potential in "giant" mice transfected with the bovine growth hormone gene correlates to shortened life span.
abstract: Adult mice, (C57BL/6 x Sjl)F1 hybrids, transfected with the bovine growth hormone gene (bGH) grow to twice normal size, but have a mean life span less than 50% that of control siblings without the transgene. The replicative potentials of cells from six different tissue sites (tail skin and ear skin dermal fibroblasts, tail subdermal connective tissue fibroblasts, kidney medulla epithelial cells, bone marrow myofibroblasts, and spleen myofibroblasts) were assayed in vitro using clone size distribution analysis. Cells from all of the above bGH+ tissues produced a smaller fraction of large clones, relative to age-matched controls, in all of these cell types. The loss of replicative potential did not appear to be the result of negative conditioning of the cloning media by the bGH+ cells, and was tightly correlated to the period of accelerated growth in these animals (3-12 weeks), a time when additional GH receptors are expressed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle 98195.
authors.forename: W R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Pendergrass
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: N S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Wolf
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000818:Animals; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells; D002417:Cattle; D002455:Cell Division; D003470:Culture Media; D013006:Growth Hormone / Q000502:physiology*; D008136:Longevity; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D013154:Spleen / Q000166:cytology; D016019:Survival Analysis
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media; D013006:Growth Hormone