Abstract
Toxicity of bisphenol A on morphological and life-history traits of model insect Drosophila melanogaster was reported in our previous work. In the present study, we have analyzed the adversity of bisphenol A on the reproductive behavior of adult and on the expression of selected genes in the larva and adult stage of fruit fly exposed to bisphenol A (0.007 g/2 ml. or 3.5 mg/ml), in addition to determination of LC50 value of bisphenol A in larva and pupal stage. We employed both the quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR and droplet digital PCR for analyzing the expression profile of seven genes namely, decapentaplegic, vestigial, wingless, foraging, insulin-like receptor, doublesex, and fruitless. We found bisphenol A has more adverse effects on male sexual behavior than females. Moreover, we observed significant downregulation of all the selected genes in treated larvae except, fruitless in male where it showed significant upregulation. On contrary among the treated adult flies, significant downregulation of all target genes in both sexes is evident, except, doublesex and fruitless in males which showed significant upregulation. We did not observe any deviation of male: female sex ratio from 1:1 under bisphenol A exposure. All these results suggest bisphenol A adversely affects the optimum functioning of genes which are involved in the regulation of metabolic pathways, behavioral pattern, stress response, endocrine homeostasis, neural functioning, and the development of the specific organ in Drosophila melanogaster. Our result not only provides a foundation to study further the bisphenol A toxicity on different pivotal genes in Drosophila but also suggests the use of the droplet digital PCR technology in toxicity measurement at the molecular level in eukaryotic model systems.
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Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are thankful to the Head, Department of Zoology, University of Calcutta for departmental centralize instrumental facilities supported by DST-FIST, UGC-UPEII, UGC- PURSE programs.
Funding
The work was supported financially by the grant from the University Grant Commission, India (UGC) in the scheme University of potential excellence, phase II (UPE II) to SG. The experimental part performed by AB was supproted from the Ramanujan Fellowship; Grant ID SB/S2/RJN-106/2015 (SERB-DST) and Extramural Core Reserach Project; Grant ID EMR/2016/003293 (SERB DST).
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SG conceptualized the work, collected funding, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. MB performed the experiments, analyzed the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. PP helped in experimentation. DD helped in experimentation and maintained fly culture. KC and AB helped in experimentation.
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ESM 1
Distorted wing (a) and (b) in F2 generation BPA-treated adult flies compared with control (C) (PNG 109 kb)
ESM 2
Results of qRT-PCR: Cq values of genes for, dInR, dpp, wg, vg, dsx (♂ and ♀), and fru (♂ and ♀) in larva and adults exposed to BPA and damiozide/alar (reference toxicant) against two reference house-keeping genes Actin 5C and GAPDH (XLSX 37 kb)
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Begum, M., Paul, P., Das, D. et al. Genes regulating development and behavior exhibited altered expression in Drosophila melanogaster exposed to bisphenol A: use of real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) in genotoxicity study. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 7090–7104 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10805-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10805-0