Brain DNA damage analysis in pesticide exposed wistar albino rats (Rattus norvegicus): a chemometric approach

Abstract

Brain the most important organ which controls most of the regulations in the body is composed of neurons and glia. As brain has a high metabolic rate and reduced cell renewal capability, the lipids, proteins and nucleic acids become the major targets of damage. In the present study carbofuran (CF) induced brain DNA damage in male wistar albino rats at sub-lethal doses (Control-A; B-1.0, C-0.5 and D-0.3 mg/kg BW) while the groups B1,C1, D1, B2, C2, D2 and B3, C3, D3 represents the exposure duration 30, 60 and 90 days each respectively. FTIR spectroscopy based chemometric analysis of functional groups in nucleic acids are reported, changes in band area and band frequencies were examined to understand the DNA damage by constructing heat map. Significant changes were observed in the band frequency, band areas, bandwidth and intensity values (p < 0.05, 0.01, 0.001). The principal component analysis was analyzed to study the alterations at the molecular level, which revealed maximum variance of 74% in groups A, B1, C1, D1 and C2 and 13.7% variance in B2, D2, B3, C3 and D3. The present study provides significant details to analyse DNA damage using non-conventional approach and can also be used for detecting DNA damage in several neural diseases and disorders and emphasizes on using FTIR spectral data through chemometric approach to analyse the DNA damage.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Keywords:

• Carbofuran
• FT-IR spectroscopy
• wistar albino rat
• brain DNA damage
• heat map
• principal component analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Government of Karnataka, Directorate of Minorities (GOKDOM) for providing financial support under the scheme MPhil and PhD fellowship for minority students (award letter no: DOM/FELLOWSHIP/CR-12/2018-19, July 7, 2018) to carry out the research work. The authors also thank University Science Instrumentation Centre (USIC) for providing FT-IR facility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.