Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) is an evolutionarily conserved 36 kDa nuclear protein that by functioning as a co-factor for DNA polymerase 6 is an absolute requirement for semiconservative DNA synthesis (Bravo & MacDonaldBravo, 1987; Suzuka et al., 1989;Baserga, 1991 Levison, 1990;McCormick & Hall, 1992). The rationale for this approach is the ability of several anti-PCNA antibodies to recognise fixation-and processingresistant epitopes (Hall et al., 1990;McCormick & Hall, 1992), thus allowing the possibility of objectively quantifying the number of cycling cells in tissue sections. One particular commercially available antibody, clone PCIO , has been widely employed in pathology in this context.In the original description of the application of this reagent to pathological material, Hall et al. (1990) reported that, in addition to important technical caveats on its use, the number of PCIO-immunoreactive cells appeared to exceed that expected in certain situations, most notably in neoplasia. Part of the explanation for the expression of PCNA in non-cycling cells lies in the long half-life of the PCNA protein . Support for this interpretation was provided by detailed kinetic studies of tumour xenografts (Scott et al., 1991). It has also been shown that PCNA participates in DNA repair processes. Tightly bound PCNA can be found associated with chromatin at all phases of the cell cycle after UV irradiation in vitro (Celis & Madsen, 1986;Toschi & Bravo, 1988), and PCNA has been shown to an obligate requirement for DNA nucleotide excision repair (Shivji et al., 1992). PCNA may be expressed by non-cycling cells in vivo which are undergoing DNA repair (Hall et al., 1993). However, this cannot explain all the situations in which 'aberrant' PCNA expression has been observed.In several organs, notably breast, liver and pancreas, normal tissues adjacent to tumours show high levels of PCNA expression that appears not to be associated with proliferation (Hall et al., 1990;Pelosi et al., 1992;Harrison et al., 1993 25 Ci mmol ', Amersham International, Amersham, UK). One hour later the animals (n = 6) were killed and xenografts growing in the liver were removed, fixed in formalin and processed to paraffin for both immunostaining and autoradiography.It is known from previous studies that LoVo and HT-29 express growth factors similar to transforming growth factor (TGF-x) and epidermal growth factor (EGF) (Anano et al., 1989; Imanishi et al., 1989). Therefore, in a second set of experiments, rats were given total parenteral nutrition (TPN) with or without supplements of TGF-x or EGF for 3 days, as described previously (Goodlad et al., 1987(Goodlad et al., , 1992. In brief, male Wistar rats (approximately 200 g) were anaesthetised with 0.7 ml of Hypnorm and 0.07 ml of diazepam (intraperitoneal route), and a silastic cannula was tied into the right external jugular vein. The cannula was connected through a stainless-steel skin button and tethered to a fluid swivel joint (SMA, Barnet, UK). The rats were housed individu...