Assessment of Genotoxicity of Potassium Nitrate and Sodium Benzoate in Drosophila melanogaster Using Smart and Comet Assays

Abstract

Modern food industry increasingly relies on food additives. The dramatic increase in the demand on preserved ready to eat food products making up to 75 percent of the diet of western society lead to neglectance of the harmful effects of the food additives on human health; among these are hypersensitivity, allergic reactions, genotoxicity, mutagenicity and more. This proposal investigates genotoxic effects of two commonly used food preservatives; sodium benzoate and potassium nitrate using the somatic mutation and recombination test (SMART) and comet assay. Two important end points of genotoxicity can be covered by in vivo assay systems; comet assay detects DNA damage, while the Drosophila transgenic animal model recognizes gene mutation and/or chromosomal aberrations. Both of the tested compounds showed significantly high levels of tumor induction and frequency compared to a negative control in SMART assay accompanied with a significant amount of DNA damage detected by the comet assay indicating their high potential of being genotoxic materials