Study on Application of γH_2AX to Detecting Formaldehyde Induced DNA Damage

Objective To investigate whether γH2AX is a sensitive,rapid and simple technique in detecting formaldehyde induced DNA damage.Methods After V79 lung cells were treated with formaldehyde,γH2AX foci formation was detected by immune-fluorescent microscopy.Single cell gel electrophoresis was employed to detect DNA damage.Results Increase of the formation of γH2AX foci could be induced by treating V79 lung cells in 20 μmol/L formaldehyde for 10 min,however,the increase of comet tail length would increase only 2 h later.When the cells were treated with 1 μmol/L formaldehyde for 8 h,the mean value of foci per cell and the percentage of γH2AX foci cells increased significantly compared with the control(P0.05),however,this dosage could not increase comet tail length at any time duration.Conclusions γH2AX could detect formaldehyde induced DNA damage at early stage,moreover,DNA damage induced by low concentration formaldehyde could also be detected.It is more sensitive than single cell gel electrophoresis.