Silver Exposure Causes Transferable Defects of Phenotypes and Behaviors in Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans

Silver, as a global pollutant, is severely harmful to human health. However, whether the multi-biological toxicities of silver exposure could be transferred from exposed animals to their progeny has not been clarified. In the present study, we explored the model organism, nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, to analyze the multiple toxicities of silver exposure and their possibly transferable properties. Endpoints of life span, body size, brood size, generation time, body bend and head thrash were used for the evaluation of silver toxicity. High concentrations (75 and 200 μM) of silver exposure caused multi-biological defects of life span, development, reproduction and locomotion behavior, whereas low concentration (2.5 μM) of silver exposure did not resulted in severe life span defects. Moreover, most of these multi-biological toxicities could be transferred from exposed animals to their progeny at different concentrations of silver (2.5, 75 and 200 μM). Only the body bend defects could be largely recovered in progeny animals. The body size defects in progeny of high concentration (75 and 200 μM) of silver exposed animals appeared even more severe than their parents. Therefore, our results suggest that the silver exposure can cause severely multi-biological defects and most of these defects are transferable in C. elegans. These transferred multi-biological defects provide a new evaluation system to indicate or monitor the toxicity from silver exposure.