Nickel-induced apoptosis and relevant signal transduction pathways in Caenorhabditis elegans.
Many investigations have shown that nickel exposure can induce micronuclei generation, inhibit DNA repair and induce cell apoptosis, both in cells and tissues. However, there is a lack of appropriate in vivo animal models to study the underlying mechanisms of nickel-induced apoptosis. The model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans, has been shown to be a good model for investigating many biological processes. In the present study, we detected 0.01 mM nickel induced significantly germline cell apoptosis after treatment for 12 hours, which demonstrated that C. elegans could be a mammalian in vivo substitute model to study the mechanisms of apoptosis. Then gene knockout C. elegans strains were utilized to investigate the relationship between nickel-induced apoptosis and relevant signal pathways, which were involved in DNA damage and repair, apoptosis regulation and damage signal transduction. The results presented here demonstrated that nickel-induced apoptosis was independent of the DNA damage response gene, such as hus-1, p53/cep-1 and egl-1. The loss-of-function of the genes that related to Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) signaling cascades suppressed nickel-induced germline apoptosis, while ERK signaling cascades have no effects on the nickel-induced germline apoptosis.
Cai Kezhou
Biology and Food Industrial College, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, People's Republic of China, Key Laboratory of Ion Beam Bioengineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, People's Republic of China.
Ren Chong
Yu Zengliang
D000818:Animals; D017209:Apoptosis; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000378:metabolism; D004249:DNA Damage; D048049:Extracellular Signal-Regulated MAP Kinases / Q000378:metabolism; D048031:JNK Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases / Q000378:metabolism; D023421:Models, Animal; D009532:Nickel / Q000633:toxicity*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000187:drug effects*; D048051:p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases / Q000378:metabolism
D009532:Nickel; D048049:Extracellular Signal-Regulated MAP Kinases; D048031:JNK Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases; D048051:p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases