engleski

Toxicity of thallium(I) acetate in Arabidopsis thaliana, L.

Thallium is naturally occurring trace element widely distributed in earth’s crust but at very low concentration. Due to its high toxicity to all living organisms, thallium pollution and its impact on food chain quality have become increasing environmental concerns. Increasing use in emerging new technologies and demanding high-tech industry constantly raise the concern about exposure risk to all living organisms. However, it has not been studied extensively and published toxicity studies are scarce. In order to study the toxicity effect of thallium(I) acetate, seeds of <I> Arabidopsis thaliana</I> were allowed to germinate on agar plates containing different thallium(I) acetate concentration. Following a three week dose-response assay, the inhibition of seedlings growth was proportional to the increase of thallium concentration. A random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) assay was employed to detect DNA damage in response to thallium toxicity. For the DNA polymorphism analysis, sixty 10-base pair random primers with 60-70% GC content were screened. Among them, ten RAPD primers, that gave uniformly reproducible bands were chosen for further evaluation of thallium genotoxicity. Since the major drawback of the RAPD technique as a PCR-based method, is the reproducibility of the fingerprints banding, different concentration of DNA template were tested. In conclusion, after suitable optimization of PCR procedure as well as primer choice, the RAPD assay could detect DNA alteration in response to thallium exposure. These results show changes in intensity, gain and loss of bands due to thallium exposure.

Arabidopsis; thallium; genotoxicity

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