Selective gap-junctional communication capacity of transformed and non-transformed rat liver epithelial cell lines

To investigate whether a selective intercellular communicationexists between transformed epithelial cells and their counterparts,the homologous and heterologous communication capacities offour rat liver epithelial cell lines were compared with theirexpression of transformed phenotypes. All four cell lines showedreasonably good homologous junctional communication capacity,as measured by the dye-transfer assay. In heterologous co-cultures,the non-transformed cell line IAR 20 did not communicate withthe transformed cell lines IAR 6–1 or IAR 27 F. Thesetwo cell lines showed a high degree of transformed phenotypessuch as cell morphology, growth in soft agar and expressionof -glutamyltrans-peptidase activity. Another cell line IAR27 E, showed the least degree of transformation and it communicatedwith IAR 20 cells. Thus, it appears that there is an inversecorrelation between the extent of expression of transformedphenotypes by rat liver epithelial cells and their ability tocommunicate with non-transformed counterparts. There was noheterologous intercellular communication between any combinationof IAR 27 E, IAR 27 F and IAR 6–1 cell lines.