The effect of diethylstilbestrol (DES) on sister chromatid exchange (SCE) induction was measured in four cell lines to determine whether metabolic activation of DES is a factor in its genotoxic potential. Two of these, cell lines derived from a human hepatoblastoma (HepG2-GW) and a rat hepatoma (H4-AG), have been shown previously in our laboratory to be capable of metabolizing several procarcinogens to their active forms. DES, in a dose range of 1 X 10(-8) M to 1 X 10(-5) M, increased SCE frequencies by 50 to 60% in both the rat and human hepatoma lines but had no effect on SCE induction in Chinese hamster lung fibroblasts (V79-GW) or human diploid skin fibroblasts (MGH 2C-GW), both of which are nonmetabolizing cell lines. Furthermore, pretreatment of the responsive cell lines (H4-AG and HepG2-GW) with indomethacin, an inhibitor of prostaglandin synthetase-mediated metabolism of DES, effectively prevented the induction of SCE by DES. DES failed to increase the frequency of hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase locus mutants in H4-AG cells, over a dose range which induced SCE. These observations suggest that DES induces SCE but does not induce gene mutation. These data strongly support growing evidence that metabolic activation of DES may be an important factor in its genotoxic and carcinogenic mechanisms.