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ToxSci Advance Access published online on August 28, 2007
Toxicological Sciences, doi:10.1093/toxsci/kfm220
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Toxicology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Cadmium induced germline apoptosis in Caenorhabditis elegans: the roles of HUS1, p53 and MAPK signaling pathways

Shunchang Wang*,{dagger}, Minli Tang*, Bei Pei*, Xiang Xiao*, Jun Wang*, Haiying Hang{ddagger} and Lijun Wu*,1

* Key Laboratory of Ion Beam Bioengineering, Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 230031, PR China {dagger} Department of Chemistry and Biology, Huainan Normal University, Huainan, Anhui 232001, PR China {ddagger} Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, PR China

1To whom correspondence should be addressed: Key Laboratory of Ion Beam Bioengineering, Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P. O. Box 1126, Hefei, Anhui 230031, P. R. China. Tel: 86-551-5591602; Fax: 86-551-5591310; Email Address: ljw{at}ipp.ac.cn

Received July 24, 2007; accepted August 17, 2007


  Abstract

The transition metal cadmium has been shown to induce apoptosis in a variety of cell lines and tissues. Caspase activation of the tumor suppressor gene p53, and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPKs) signaling cascades have been reported to be involved in cadmium-induced apoptosis. However, the underlying pathways of cadmium-induced apoptosis have not been clearly elucidated in the in vivo systems, primarily for the lack of appropriate animal models. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been shown to be a good model to study basic biological processes, including apoptosis. In this study, we used the mutated alleles of C. elegans homologs of known mammalian genes that are involved in regulation of apoptosis. Sublethal doses of cadmium exposure increased C. elegans germline apoptosis in a dose- and time-dependent manner. The loss-of-function mutations of DNA damage response genes HUS1 and p53 exhibited significant increase in germline apoptosis under cadmium exposure, and the depletion of p53 antagonist ABL1 significantly enhanced apoptosis. Cadmium-induced apoptosis was blocked in the loss-of-function alleles of both JNK and p38 MAPK cascades, which behaved normally under {gamma}-irradiation. Our findings implicate that both JNK and p38 MAPK cascades participate in cadmium-induced apoptosis. Together, the results of this study suggest the non-essential roles of the DNA damage response genes hus1 and p53 in cadmium-induced germline apoptosis, and that the apoptosis occurs through the ASK1/2-MKK7-JNK and ASK1/2-MKK3/6-p38 signaling pathways in a caspase-dependent manner. Finally, our study demonstrates that C. elegans is a mammalian in vivo substitute model to study the mechanisms of cadmium induced apoptosis.

Key Words: cadmium; Caenorhabditis elegans; apoptosis; HUS1; p53; MAPK.


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