Using Caenorhabditis elegans as a Tool for Identifying Environmental Lead Contamination: A new endpoint for relating exposures to lead risk

Abstract

Nematodes have been used as test organisms for many new endpoints in toxicity. Much of this has been reported in texts and in the Wormbook, published by the C.elegans research community. Key factors in measuring toxicity are the amount of toxic material absorbed and its bioavailability. This study demonstrates that there are markers for toxicity that respond to both toxicity and the bioavailability, thus providing data points to accurately express the real environmental threat. Alterations in key metabolites of the tryptophan pathway were observed in studies of C. elegans exposed to soluble and insoluble lead. The changes observed correlate to the metal's bioavailability. Of note was the increase in anthranilic acid (AA) production with increasing exposure to bioavailable lead. This was the only metabolite of tryptophan that showed any increase in concentration. Nematodes exposed to other metals of environmental significance including cadmium, tin and arsenic at concentration levels found in contaminated ...