engleski

Application of comet assay in biomonitoring of freshwater environments

The commet assay (single cell gel electrophoresis) is a simple, sensitive and rapid technique for detection of DNA damage (single- and duobule-strand breaks, DNA-DNA and DNA-protein crosslinks) in individual eukaryotic cells. Therefore this method can be very useful in studies of genetic toxicology, especially ecogenotoxicoloty. In this study we used comet assay on freshwater bivalve (Dreissena polymorpha Pallas) haemocytes to monitor the genotoxicity of freshwater environments. Caged mussels, collected from the river Drava, were transplanted to four monitoring sites of different pollution intensity in the river Sava. In order to assess the baseline DNA damage in transplanted mussels on sample was exposed at the site of origin were the mussels were collected from. Exposition lasted for a month. Haemocytes of mussels from the reference site in the river Drava and from the site Zagreb showed no or slight DNA damage. Damage from the site Lukavec was slightly higher. However, a significant increase in the percentage of DNA in the tail was noticed after exposure to two heavily polluted sites, Oborovo and Sisak. Our results support the use of haemocytes from caged, nonindigenous mussels in comet assay as a sensitive tool for the genotoxicity monitoring of freshwater environments.

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