Genotoxicity of three pesticides used in Costa Rican banana plantations

The in vitro genotoxicity of imazalil and thiabendazole fungicides and the insecticide chlorpyrifos, compounds used in Costa Rican banana plantations, was evaluated with the single-cell gel electrophoresis technique (comet assay). The comet assay is a simple, rapid and low cost technique for quantif...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Vindas, Rebeca, Ortiz, Fernando, Ramírez, Vanessa, Cuenca, Patricia
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2004
Country:Costa Rica
Institution:Universidad de Costa Rica
Repository:Portal de Revistas UCR
Language:Spanish
OAI Identifier:oai:portal.ucr.ac.cr:article/15343
Online Access:https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/rbt/article/view/15343
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:single-cell gel electrophoresis
comet assay
imazalil
chlorpyrifos
thiabendazole
lymphocytes]
genotoxic
electroforesis de celulas unicas
ensayo cometa
clorpirifos
tiabendazol
linfocitos
genotoxico
Description
Summary:The in vitro genotoxicity of imazalil and thiabendazole fungicides and the insecticide chlorpyrifos, compounds used in Costa Rican banana plantations, was evaluated with the single-cell gel electrophoresis technique (comet assay). The comet assay is a simple, rapid and low cost technique for quantification of DNA damage. This assay detects DNA single- strand breaks and alkali-labile sites in individual cells. The effects were analyzed by using human lymphocytes exposed to doses of 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 µg/ml of each pesticide for 30 min at 37°C. The cells were embedded in agarose, lysed, subjected to alkaline electrophoresis (pH> 13) for 20 min at 25V, neutralized and dehydrated to be stained with a fluorescent dye and later comets visualization with the epifluorescence microscope. Chlorpyrifos and imazalil induced significant DNA damage in a dose-dependent manner. Chlorpyrifos was the major inductor of DNA breaks. These results indicate that both are genotoxic compounds in vitro. Thiabendazole fungicide did not induced DNA damage using the comet assay for all concentrations tested