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Biomedical subjects

P R Painter

Publications and source records attributed to P R Painter.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

On the carcinogenicity of cadmium by the oral route.

Cadmium and cadmium compounds are carcinogenic both by inhalation and by injection. For purposes of risk assessment, a prudent public health approach has been that, if a chemical has been demonstrated to be carcinogenic by one route, it should be considered carcinogenic by all routes. This policy has been questioned for several toxic metals including cadmium. After reviewing the literature on cadmium carcinogenicity and genotoxicity, we think that cadmium should be considered noncarcinogenic by the oral route. The bases for this decision included: (1) a database for genotoxicity of cadmium with more negative test results than positive results and with most positive results in in vitro tests, indicating that cadmium has limited genotoxicity; (2) some epidemiologic evidence of respiratory tract cancer and prostatic cancer in people occupationally exposed to airborne cadmium but no reliable evidence of gastrointestinal tract cancers in workers; and (3) a large dietary oncogenicity study in rats of cadmium chloride at several dose levels, including a maximally tolerated dose (50 ppm) in males, which showed no increase of tumors due to cadmium ingestion in all of the 19 tissues examined. The conclusion that an agent, which has been shown to be carcinogenic by one route of exposure, is not carcinogenic by a second route should be made only in the presence of robust data which indicate the lack of effect via the second route of exposure.

Administration, Oral↗
PubMed1978

Estimation of the cell-to-cell spread of tobacco mosaic virus infection in mechanically inoculated leaves.

Procedures to estimate cell-to-cell spread of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) infection in mechanically inoculated leaves are presented mathematically and experimentally. Based upon the mathematical estimation, it is demonstrated that resistance of TMV infection to 2-thiouracil and guanidine in mechanically inoculated leaves is correlated to the fraction of cells infected. The addition of 2-thiouracil or guanidine prevents cell-to-cell spread of TMV infection.

Antiviral Agents↗
PubMed1975

Mutator genes and selection for the mutation rate in bacteria.

Gene frequencies in populations of haploid, asexual organisms are described by linear recurrence equations. Several models in which the mutation rate is controlled by one locus and the fitness is controlled at one or more other loci are developed. It is shown that good approximations can be introduced to give explicit solutions for the course of selection in these models. It is shown that a strong non-equilibrium selection for mutator genes is possible even when the presence of such a gene decreases the fitness of an individual. Experiments that corroborate these conclusions are discussed along with the effects of population size that determine the applicability of these results to natural populations.

Alleles↗
PubMed1975

Generation times of bacteria.

Random delays in cell division lead to correlations between the generation times of mothers and their daughters and to a difference between the 'real' and the 'artificial' distributions of generation times. At present there is no satisfactory relation between the two distributions although both are useful in the analysis of growth. In a special case, it is shown that they are similar as long as the coefficient of variation of generation times is small.

Bacteria↗
PubMed1974

The relative numbers of different genes in exponential microbial cultures.

It is shown that the results of the marker frequency analysis of Sueoka and Yoshikawa (1965) can be derived as very good approximations from a model where the rigid assumptions of their analysis are relaxed to take into account statistical variations in the timing of cell events. It is further shown that the expression for the amount of DNA per cell can be approximated by an elementary exponential function of the growth rate, and this result facilitates genetic mapping by DNA hybridization techniques. An analysis of recent data on gene frequencies in Escherichia coli corroborates a model of symmetric, bidirectional chromosome replication with a replication time of approximately thirty minutes.

Cell Division↗
PubMed1967

Kinetics of growth of individual cells of Escherichia coli and Azotobacter agilis.

Escherichia coli and Azotobacter agilis were grown in minimal media until a steady state was established. The distribution of cell size was determined electronically. From the equation of Collins and Richmond, the growth rate of individual cells was computed as a function of size. The main features of the growth of individual E. coli and A. agilis cells revealed by this work were: the specific growth rate decreased at the time of division, and both the absolute and specific growth rates increased between divisions. The frequency function of interdivision times was computed and was found to be positively skewed with a coefficient of variation of approximately 0.3. The results supported the hypothesis of Koch and Schaechter that the size of an individual cell at division is highly regulated.

Azotobacter↗