CHAPTER 16: Micronucleus Assays in Amphibians
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Published:18 Jul 2019
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Special Collection: 2019 ebook collectionSeries: Issues in Toxicology
A. Giri and S. Giri, in The Micronucleus Assay in Toxicology, ed. S. Knasmüller and M. Fenech, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019, pp. 259-272.
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Induction of micronucleus (MN) expression is a well-validated biomarker of genotoxic exposure in eukaryotic cells and is widely used in biomonitoring programs. The presence of permeable skin, which facilitates toxicant exposure and local abundance, is among the characteristics that make amphibians good indicators of ecosystem health. The presence of large nucleated erythrocytes, which divide in the circulation, makes amphibian erythrocytes an ideal target tissue to detect genotoxin exposure using the MN assay. Published literature have highlighted the promising prospects of using the amphibian MN assay as a sensitive biomonitoring tool for water quality assessment to detect potential genotoxins. The present chapter provides the basic outline of the amphibian MN assay and highlights its use in genotoxicity testing in experimental and biomonitoring studies.