Increased mutation rate at the hprt locus accompanies microsatellite instability in colon cancer.

Hereditary Non-Polyposis Colon Cancer (HNPCC) tumors and some sporadic colon cancers acquire somatic changes in the length of microsatellite sequences. We hypothesized that this 'replication error' (RER) phenotype in these cancers reflects a more general defect which should result in hypermutability of expressed genes. To test this hypothesis mutations of hprt were studied in RER and non-RER tumor cell lines.