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Cultured fibroblasts established from skin biopsies from patients with the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome are deficient in hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl-transferase (EC 2.4.2.8) activity. This deficiency makes possible the use of chemicals that select either for or against deficient variants in cultured fibroblasts. Two-way selection has been achieved by the use of 6-thioguanine, which selects for the deficient mutant, and azaserine, which selects to some extent for the normal allele in mixed cultures, as well as in cultures from heterozygotes. Theoretical considerations predict that the phenomenon of metabolic cooperation would tend to reinforce the former and to weaken the latter type of selection, and this is in accordance with the experimental findings.

Cultured skin fibroblasts from patients deficient for the enzyme hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (PRT) activity show very low but nevertheless significant levels of apparent PRT enzyme despite absence of detectable activity (<0.004% of normal) in erythrocytes of the same patients. In fibroblasts this mutant enzyme is more heat labile than the normal enzyme. These findings indicate that PRT deficiency in this disorder is not due to a deletion mutation of the PRT locus.Individual cultured skin fibroblasts from heterozygote females for PRT deficiency show normal, intermediate, or very low levels of PRT activity. The mosaicism demonstrated in the heterozygotes for this X-linked disorder accounts for the cells with normal and very low activities of PRT. Intermediate activity can best be explained by the phenomenon of metabolic cooperation presumably from the transfer of either PRT enzyme or messenger RNA, from normal to mutant cells.

Two male diploid fibroblast strains, each carrying deficiency mutations at different X-linked loci (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase and hypoxanthine-guanine-phosphoribosyltransferase) have been successfully hybridized. The resulting mononucleated hybrid cells have been shown to synthesize both normal gene products, indicating that both X chromosomes are functionally active in the hybrid cells. We believe this is the first reported example of intergenic complementation in fused human diploid cells.