Abstract
Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is a common contaminant of poultry feeds in tropical and subtropical climates. Early researches have well established the hepatotoxic, carcinogenic, and immunotoxic effects of AFB1 on humans and animals. Recently, it has been shown that AFB1 could cause the up- or down-alteration of mitochondrial pathway molecule expression. However, the information on the expression of death receptor and endoplasmic reticulum molecules in the jejunal apoptosis induced by AFB1 were unavailable. So the present study was conducted to explore the expression of apoptotic molecules related to death receptor and endoplasmic reticulum in the jejunal cells of chickens exposed to AFB1 diet for 3 weeks. Total of 144 one-day-old chickens was randomly divided into two groups, namely control group (containing 0 mg/kg AFB1) and AFB1 group (containing 0.6 mg/kg AFB1). Histopathological observation and microscopic quantitative analysis revealed morphological changes in the jejunum such as the shedding of the mucosal epithelial cells in the apical region of villi along with the decrease of villus height, villus area and villus/crypt ratio in the AFB1 group. Both TUNEL and flow cytometry assays showed that AFB1 intake induced excessive apoptosis of jejunal cells. Quantitative real-time PCR test displayed the general upregulation of death receptors (FAS, FASL, TNF-α and TNF-R1), endoplasmic reticulum signals (GRP78 and GRP94) as well as initiator and executioner caspases (CASPASE-10, CASPASE-8 and CASPASE-3) in the jejunum of AFB1-intoxicated chickens. It's the first study demonstrating that AFB1 induced apoptosis of chickens’ jejunum accompanied by the alteration of death receptor and endoplasmic reticulum molecule expression.
Highlights
Aflatoxins are the secondary metabolites of Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus
Pathological observation showed that the mucosal epithelial cells in the apical region of villi were obviously shedding in the aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) group at 7, 14 and 21 days of age when compared with the control group (Figure 1a1b)
Microscopic quantitative analysis revealed that the villus heights, villus areas and villus/crypt ratios of the AFB1 group were significantly decreased (p
Summary
Aflatoxins are the secondary metabolites of Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Aflatoxins have the highest incidence in food and feed. More than 20 kinds of aflatoxins have been isolated, including aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, G2 and so on [1]. Of these toxins, aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is the most commonly encountered and is supposed to have higher toxicity than other aflatoxins [2]. International Agency www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget for Research on Cancer (IARC) has produced sufficient evidences of carcinogenicity of AFB1 and classified it as a Group I human carcinogen [3]. The hepatotoxic, carcinogenic, genotoxic, immunotoxic and other detrimental effects of AFB1 in many animal species including humans have been well documented [4,5,6]
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