7th ISF

BIOL039 - Caenorhabditis elegans as Model System and Its Correlation Analysis of Toxicity with Rodents


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Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a free-living transparent nematode that is about 1mm at the adult state. They are largely used as a model organism in different laboratories. The use of C. elegans as a predictive model for human toxicity has been done in a wide variety of heavy metals, pesticides and pollutants.In this study, we have developed a fast and inexpensive C. elegans-based toxicity assay to evaluate the toxicity of 1,2-hexanediol, a chemical that is widely used in skincare products. Besides, we investigated the predictive ability of C. elegans for rodent toxicological research using a correlative approach. Three commonly used chemicals in food, boric acid, hydrogen peroxide and formaldehyde were selected for acute toxicity tests using C. elegans. In the C. elegans-based toxicity assay, the viability of C. elegans was lowered to 44% after 17 hours treatment of 1% 1, 2-hexanediol respectively. Besides, no C. elegans survived after 20 minutes of treatment of 3%, 5% and 7% 1,2-hexanediol. Thus 1% or higher than 1% 1,2-hexanediol is highly toxic. We believe that the C. elegans model in toxicity screening can be exploited for high-throughput screening of chemicals in cosmetic products and reducing the use of vertebrate animals in toxicology studies, which are more expensive and time-consuming. In the study of correlation analysis of toxicity, it demonstrated that C. elegans may have the predictive ability on the acute toxicity to the LD50 of rodents. All 3 tested chemicals show a moderate correlation to the mouse/rat LD50 data and more chemicals are suggested to be included to improve the validity. Thus, we have developed an efficient and convenient acute toxicity testing system to evaluate the toxicity of chemicals, but not only for testing the toxicity of food chemicals. C. elegans toxicity assays can work as a screening model for finding a wanted concentration or dosage range for further mammalian models for toxicity tests, as to reduce the number of experiments and the time cost.

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Name :  

Yuen Ting Lee, Yi Luo

Email :  

s171460@gtcollege.edu.hk

Advisor :  

Christine Yu

School :  

G.T.(Ellen Yeung) College (Hong Kong)


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