Caenorhabditis elegans: an emerging animal model for biomonitoring environmental toxicity.

DANIELA UCCELLETTI; ELENA ZANNI; MARIA M. GUERISOLI; CLAUDIO PALLESCHI

Rimini

Congreso; 14th International Biotechnology Symposium and Exhibition. Biotechnology for the Sustainability of Human Society; 2010

Since several decades C.elegans has been exploited as modelorganism for developmental biology, genetics and medical sciences,making it one of the best known multicellular organisms.This soil nematode is now emerging as an excellent modelorganism for ecotoxicological essays: it is simple enough to bemanipulated like amicrorganism, but it is amulti-cellular organismthat exhibits complex behaviours. There is a high degree of evolutionaryconservation between C.elegans and higher organisms inmany of the stress-response genes and signal transduction pathwaysthat are affected by toxicant exposure. Additionally, C.eleganscan grow and reproduce in multi-well plates and GFP report technologyhas been implemented in a large variety of configurations.This nematode can be therefore exploited in high-throughput technologiessuitable also for in vivo bioactive molecule screenings.Here, we report data concerning the use of C.elegans as a test organismto detect pharmaceutical residues in the environment and theconstruction, by molecular genetic approaches, of transgenic animalstrains with high sensitivity to the examined compounds. Wehave also measured developmental alterations upon exposure tothe studied molecules and examined the involvement of genes ofthe stress response pathways