Journal of Genetics and Genomes

Background: Murine liver tumor cell lines MH-22A and Hepa 1-6 are used regularly in studies working on better treatment options. Even though both cell lines have been established 40 to 50 year ago, the literature lacks details on their cytogenetic and cytogenomic constitution. Here the corresponding gap in the literature is closed, as both cell lines have been characterized in detail for their chromosome numbers and content.

Methods: Here we performed the first molecular cytogenetic characterization for the two murine liver tumor cell lines MH-22A and Hepa 1-6 using fluorescence in situ hybridization and molecular karyotyping.

Results: Both cell lines are (near-)triploid and show numerous chromosome rearrangements leading to expressed copy number alterations. The by molecular cytogenetics and molecular karyotyping obtained data of the cell lines MH-22A and Hepa 1-6 was in silico (= genome browser based-) translated to the human genome. This previously successfully applied approach enabled the characterization of MH-22A as a model for hepatoblastoma or early hepatocellular carcinoma and Hepa 1-6 for (advanced) hepatocellular carcinoma.

Conclusions: The cell lines MH-22A and Hepa 1-6 can now be applied in research in a justified way.

The recent rapid growth of genomic data has made it possible to identify genes having the same inferred function, even among distantly related species, such as humans and invertebrates. Assessing evolutionary relationships provides a way to interpolate or extrapolate gene attributes among species [1]. For such evolutionary analyses, we developed a web tool called ORTHOSCOPE [2]. By uploading gene sequences of interest and by selecting species genomes from >450 bilaterians (Figure 1), users can infer their functions and copy numbers, according to results reported by ORTHOSCOPE in the form of gene trees. That is, ORTHOSCOPE can estimate the evolutionary history of a gene with one click.