Establishment of a rat hepatoma cell line which has ornithine carbamoyltransferase activity and grows continuously in arginine-deprived medium

The epithelial cell line, H4-II-E derived from Reuber hepatoma H35 has no significant activity of ornithine carbamoyltransferase (OCT, EC 2.1.3.3) and is not able to grow in arginine-deprived medium. A multi-step selection procedure is described which selects from H4-II-E populations, cells with OCT activity which can grow in arginine-deficient, ornithine-supplemented media.