Various sublines of cells established from an osteosarcoma that developed in a patient (O.H.) with previous bilateral retinoblastoma were examined for different restriction fragment-length polymorphisms of chromosome 13q, as well as for rearrangements of the retinoblastoma gene using a cDNA probe. The independently established sublines were used to help separate primary and secondary events taking place in tumorigenesis of the osteosarcoma of this patient. Information from the present DNA analysis, taken together with data from cytogenetic and enzymatic studies on chromosome 13 in the cell lines, revealed both common and distinct genetic changes on chromosome 13q. The common changes may indicate the nature of the first and second mutational events in the development of the osteosarcoma. The first, constitutional cancer predisposing mutation seemed to be a base mutation or a small deletion/insertion, and the second event involved a deletion of a larger part of the long arm of chromosome 13. The distinct genetic changes included other deletion and duplication events of chromosome 13q. The existence of multiple sublines with different genetic constitutions provides improved possibilities for gaining insight into the nature of the genetic lesions leading to tumor formation, as these may reflect the clonal variation present in the primary tumor. We also demonstrate the difficulty of inferring from single tumor cell isolates to properties of the primary tumor.