Genotoxicity Assessment of Acrylamide in Early Developing Stages of Chick Embryo Using Micronucleus Assay

The micronucleus (MN) test in bone-marrow and peripheral blood erythrocytes is one of the best established in vivo cytogenetic assays in the field of genetic toxicology, providing a convenient and reliable index of both chromosome breakage and chromosome loss. Therefore a study was made on micronuclei assay to evaluate the degree of genotoxicity of acrylamide and its toxicologic effects on chick embryo using peripheral erythrocytes. The Acrylamide treatment to chick embryo caused damage not only to peripheral blood cells and reticulocytes. About 3000 erythrocytes were scored for the presence of micronuclei for each dose and time point. The highest frequency of micronucleated erythrocytes (MN-E) was observed in high treated group. In the high treated group, developing chick embryos were treated with 0.6mg of acrylamide (AC). The frequency of MN-E in 24, 48 and 72h of 0.6mg acrylamide treatment 64.27, 68.71, and 204.17 % increased were observed compared with 0.1mg acrylamide treatment, respectively. The present results concludes that the idea of using chick embryo as a reliable alternative genotoxicity assay system which is physiologically closer to in vivo conditions than conventional in vitro genotoxicity tests, not conflicting with ethical aspects or regulatory issues of animal protection.