Usefulness of three SOS-response tests for genotoxicitydetection.

The RecA test, a luminescence SOS reporter test, and two well-known SOS reporter assays, umuC test and SOS chromotest, were compared. The main point of this study was to indicate the sensitivity of these tests. This was on the basis of comparison of effects on standard mutagens and environmental samples. The results with the selected chemicals showed that the RecA test was less sensitive in a qualitative way, in com-parison to the umuC test. However, its responses were quite comparable with the SOS chromotest. Results suggest that for our choice of environmental samples and chemical stan-dards the umuC test is optimal for genotoxicity detection, in comparison to RecA test and SOS chromotest.