Biological Responses to High Magnetic Fields in Caenorhabditis Elegans: Monitoring Chromosomal DNA Breaks and Apoptosis

強磁場環境が及ぼす生物影響への研究：染色体DNAの切断ならびにアポトーシスへの影響について

In this study, the influences of the static high magnetic fields (MFs) on DNA damage such as DNA double-strand (ds) breaks, apoptosis, and alterations of entire gene expression were investigated using a model metazoan Caenorhabditis elegans. Under the 2T to 5T MFs, no increments of ds breaks and apoptosis were observed. In addition, certain genes including hsp-16, which respond to several environmental stresses, were up-regulated but not DNA damage-induced genes. These results indicate that static high MFs did not introduce any DNA damage, although extremely-low-frequency MFs is known as possible health hazards including the ds breaks.