DNA Damage models

C. elegans has been used to evaluate DNA damage through various techniques. One approach is the use of the qPCR technique to detect damage and DNA repair. This test works on the principle that DNA damage inhibits the progression of the polymerase used in qPCR. The amount of long PCR product provides a measure of the frequency of the injury.
Another alternative is the comet assay, which was used to evaluate the genotoxic profi le of river sediment. More recently, the pathway of base excision repair has been proposed as a mechanism to assess the damage to DNA by
specific qPCR. Transgenic strains can also be used to assess DNA damage. The strain xpa-1 is deficient in the mechanism of nucleotide excision repair, and its growth is significantly affected when there is damage to DNA.
Therefore, the growth assay on this strain is an indicator of genotoxicity. The transgenic strain hus-1::GFP is utilized to assess DNA damage. HUS-1::GFP foci represents DNA double-strand breaks, allowing quantification by
counting the number of bright foci per 20 pachytene gonadal germ cells which can be observed and counted under a fluorescence microscope.