Measurement of DNA damage in rat urinary bladder transitional cells: Improved selective harvest of transitional cells and detailed Comet assay protocols

• Published in: Mutation research Vol. 634; no. 1; pp. 51 - 59
• Main Authors: Wang, Amy, Robertson, John L., Holladay, Steven D., Tennant, Alan H., Lengi, Andrea J., Ahmed, S. Ansar, Huckle, William R., Kligerman, Andrew D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01-12-2007; Elsevier
• Subjects: Animals; Biological and medical sciences; Cell Separation - methods; Comet Assay; DNA Damage; Epithelial Cells - drug effects; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Genetics of eukaryotes. Biological and molecular evolution; Male; Medical sciences; Rats; Rats, Inbred F344; Toxicology; Transitional epithelium; Urinary bladder; Urinary Bladder - cytology; Urinary Bladder - drug effects; Urinary bladder; Transitional epithelium; Comet assay; Rat; Mutagenicity testing; Rodentia; Vertebrata; Toxicology; Mammalia; Urinary system; DNA; Genetics; Lesion
• ISSN: 1383-5718; 0027-5107; 1879-3592
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mrgentox.2007.06.004

Urinary bladder transitional epithelium is the main site of bladder cancer, and the use of transitional cells to study carcinogenesis/genotoxicity is recommended over the use of whole bladders. Because the transitional epithelium is only a small fraction of the whole bladder, the alkaline single cell gel electrophoresis assay (Comet assay), which requires only a small number of cells per sample, is especially suitable for measuring DNA damage in transitional cells. However, existed procedures of cell collection did not yield transitional cells with a high purity, and pooling of samples was needed for Comet assay. The goal of this study was to develop an optimized protocol to evaluate DNA damage in the urinary bladder transitional epithelium. This was achieved by an enzymatic stripping method (trypsin–EDTA incubation plus gentle scraping) to selectively harvest transitional cells from rat bladders, and the use of the alkaline Comet assay to detect DNA strand breaks, alkaline labile sites, and DNA–protein crosslinks. Step by step procedures are reported here. Cells collected from a single rat bladder were sufficient for multiple Comet assays. With this new protocol, increases in DNA damage were detected in transitional cells after
in vitro exposure to the positive control agents, hydrogen peroxide or formaldehyde. Repair of the induced DNA damage occurred within 4
h. This indicated the capacity for DNA repair was maintained in the harvested cells. The new protocol provides a simple and inexpensive method to detect various types of DNA damage and to measure DNA damage repair in urinary bladder transitional cells.