Whole-Genome Sequencing Reveals Germ Cell Mutagenicity of α-Endosulfan in Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

Endosulfan is an extensively used organochlorine pesticide around the world, which was classified as a persistent organic pollutant (POP) in 2009. Although previous studies have documented the reproductive toxicity of endosulfan in a variety of organisms, little is known about the influence of endosulfan on the genome stability of germ cells and nonexposed progeny. Here we applied whole-genome sequencing to explore the germ cell mutagenicity of α-endosulfan in Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). We found that, although low doses of α-endosulfan exhibited a minor effect on the reproductive capacity of C. elegans, chronic exposure to 1 μM α-endosulfan significantly increased the mutation frequencies of nonexposed progeny. Further analysis of genome-wide mutation spectra demonstrated that α-endosulfan preferentially elicited A:T → G:C substitutions and clustered mutations. By using worms deficient in DNA damage response genes, our results suggest the involvement of translesion synthesis polymerase η in modulating α-endosulfan-induced mutations in germ cells. Together, these observations reveal the germ cell mutagenicity of α-endosulfan in C. elegans and the possible underlying mechanism. In addition, our findings implicate that germ cell mutagenicity might be a necessary consideration for the health risk assessment of environmental chemicals such as POPs.

Seawater Accelerated the Aging of Polystyrene and Enhanced Its Toxic Effects on Caenorhabditis elegans

“…Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a suitable model organism for assessing the ecological risks of MPs because of its transparent body, easy culturing, sensitivity to toxins, and compliance with the 3R criteria (reduction, replacement, and refinement) [30]. Toxicity assessments of MPs on C. elegans in existing reports have focused on neuro-and reproductive toxicity.…”