GENOTOXICITY OF GLYPHOSATE AND AMPA EVALUATED THROUGH COMET ASSAY IN BLOOD AND HEPATOCYTES OF TREATED MICE

MAÑAS F J , H GARCÍA OVANDO, L PERALTA, A WEYERS, L UGNIA, N GORLA

Mendoza

Congreso; XXV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo,; 2008

Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. AMPA is the major environmental breakdown product of glyphosate. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the in vivo genotoxicity of Glyphosate and AMPA using the comet assay in blood and hepatocytes of treated mice. Three groups of 4-6 Balb C mice were treated orally with Glyphosate (40 or 400 mg/kg/day) or AMPA (100 mg/kg/day) for 14 days. One group (5 animals) was used as a control, and also received sterile water by mouth. Mice were then sacrificed and comet assay was carried out with peripheral blood and hepatic tissue according to Singh (1988). One hundred nuclei were photographed for each treatment, and the images were analyzed using the software Comet Score®. The parameters used to quantify the DNA damage were Tail Moment, Tail length and percentage of DNA in the tail. For the three treatments (Glyphosate 40 or 400 mg/kg/day and AMPA 100 mg/kg/day), both in peripheral blood and liver tissue, were found statistically significant differences with respect to the control group in the three parameters used except for percentage of DNA in tail with the lowest dose of Glyphosate in hepatic tissue. In all cases, the highest values of DNA damage were observed for the highest dose of Glyphosate (400 mg / kg / day). The results indicate that both Glyphosate as AMPA can induce damage to DNA in tissues of mice after oral exposure.