Abstract

Bladder cancer is the seventh most common type of cancer in the United States. Several steps are involved in the formation of cancer. One of the steps leading to this disease is mutation. Mutations occur spontaneously in an organism due to replication errors, and it would be beneficial to know the mutation frequency in bladder tissue cells. The Big Blue^® Rat was designed by Stratagene for mutagenesis assays. It contains 30-40 copies of the lacI gene inserted into its genome, providing an easy way for researchers to determine if a mutation has occurred in an organism. The DNA from the transgenic rat is isolated and packaged into a bacteriophage so it can transfect Escherichia coli (E. coli) . The bacteria that contains a mutation will appear blue on an agar plate. These mutations are removed from the bacterial lawn and analyzed for mutations using a DNA sequencing machine. After analyzing the mutations found in this study, a mutation frequency of 11.4 X 10^-6 of lacI genes were spontaneously mutated in bladder tissue of the Big Blue^® Rat. A total of eight mutations were found. Four mutations were transitions; two were transversions. The last two mutations were frameshift mutations. Two of the mutations found were at the same locus on the gene, but they occurred in separate organisms.