In vitro and in vivo genotoxicity and molecular response of silver nanoparticles on different biological model systems

Abstract

In vitro and in vivo experiments on human cell lines (breast adenocarcinoma, MCF-7, and liver hepatocellular carcinoma, HepG2), plants (Allium cepa) and bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) displayed cytotoxic and genotoxic impacts of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The cell viability assays indicated that AgNPs had inhibitory effects on MCF-7 cell line more effectively than HepG2 cell line. Mitotic indices and distribution of cells in mitotic phases of A. cepa were clearly changed after treatment with three different weight ratios of silver metal (1, 3 and 5%) for 3 and 12 h. With increasing concentration of the nanoparticles a decrease in the mitotic index was detected (from 4.19 to 0.79 after 3 h and from 4.56 to 0.25 after 12 h) and different types of chromosomal aberrations were noticed. Protein electrophoresis results of S. aureus and P. aeruginosa demonstrated the change in the protein profiles of the two bacterial strains and it was more noticeable in P. aeruginosa than S. aureus. RAPD-PCR and ISSR-PCR analyses using different primers (OP-A19, OP-B04, OP-C04, OP-C12, OP-Q18, OP-Z03, 14A, 44B, HB-08, HB-11 and HB-12) demonstrated the impairment of bacterial DNA and induction of genetic variability. The percentage of polymorphism was higher in P. aeruginosa than S. aureus. The present findings revealed an analogous effect of AgNPs induced in in vitro and in vivo experiments, therefore AgNP applications should be given special consideration.