Nickel compounds are known to be carcinogenic to humans and show genotoxicity, including the ability to induce chromosome aberrations and neoplastic transformation in vitro. The mutagenicity of nickel compounds is, however, equivocal and the mechanisms of carcinogenesis are still not clear. In this study, the possibility that nickel compounds induce genetic or chromosomal instability was examined, because recent studies in cancer research show that these conditions are critically involved in carcinogenesis. V79 Chinese hamster cells were treated with 320 microM nickel sulfate for 24 h at low cell density (100 cells/100 mm diameter dish) and clones derived from single cells surviving Ni treatment were isolated. When cells grew up to 23-25 population doublings post-treatment, mutation frequency at the HPRT locus and the chromosome aberration frequency of each clone were examined. Five out of 37 clones (13.5%) derived from Ni-treated cells showed a remarkably increased frequency of HPRT mutations (>or=1 x 10(-4)), while only one out of 37 control clones (2.7%) showed this high mutation rate. In addition, 17 out of 37 clones (45.9%) from Ni-treated cells showed structural chromosomal aberrations in 10% or more of cells (up to 45.5%), while only three out of 31 control clones (9.7%) showed this high aberration rate. Out of 37 clones derived from Ni-treated cells, eight (21.6%) and 11 (29.7%) clones showed an increased frequency (>or=5%) of aneuploid and polyploid cells, respectively, while only a few control clones showed such an increase in aneuploid and polyploid cells. These results indicate that nickel sulfate can induce genetic and chromosomal instability in V79 cells.