In the present study, NMR spectra from intact cells as well as from perchloric acid (PCA) cell extracts were examined in order to investigate changes in lipid metabolism due to either radiation- or chemically- induced cell transformation. The four differently transformed C3H cell lines 6S, F6, NMT and MCA were compared to the parental mouse embryo fibroblast C3H 10T1/2 line. Two-dimensional 1H MR techniques were used to detect and identify metabolically pertinent substances and to measure the relative ratios of their NMR signals for the five cell lines. Data from these cellular systems indicate that while metabolite composition of the four transformed cell lines is sufficiently similar to that of the original 10T1/2 cell line, alterations in relative concentrations of these metabolites are produced by transformation. Most striking are the findings that transformation (both radiation- and chemically-induced), is always accompanied by a characteristic pattern of the choline-based metabolites. In fact, the choline resonance is the dominant one in the spectrum of the 10T1/2 but is of lower intensity with respect to those due to the phosphocholine and glycerophosphocholine metabolites, respectively, as seen in spectra from transformed 6S, F6, NMT and MCA cells.

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