超順磁奈米粒子之強磁場誘發線蟲之細胞自然凋亡並影響其行為

Abstract

在現代生活中，我們週遭都有磁場，而且是不可避免的。一般的家電用品、手機、醫療的NMR等，都會產生磁場，且磁場是超距力，說我們的生活在磁場底下真的ㄧ點也不為過。就我們的經驗，我們知道磁場可能會對生物造成不良的影響，但ㄧ直缺乏科學上的證據，在過去20幾年，科學家不斷希望找出磁場對生物的影響，但到目前為止，仍然沒有找到直接的科學證據。 現在我們利用線蟲(C.elegans)這種簡單的模式生物，用簡單的強磁裝置加上超順磁奈米粒子，我們模擬生物在強磁下的環境，觀察行為與基因表現的差異，找出磁場對生物影響的生理因子，我們發現了磁場會導致自然凋亡(apoptosis)，並提出基因表現的證據。

Intuitively, the environmental electro-magnetic field may cause bad influence and bring abnormalities to life, such as cancer. For decades, scientist worked hard to look for the association between elctro-magnetic field and diseases desperately. The direct evidence, however, is yet to be identified. In the current study, we employed Caenorhabditis elegans as a model and applied localized strong magnetic field through administration of super-paramagnetic nanoparticles fed into the worms. We found that the 3-day treatment of magnetic field caused significant retardation to the mobility of C. elegans. A reduction of 50 % in mobility was observed to the N2 L4 worm treated with localized magnetic field for 3 days. To investigate possible molecular mechanisms underlying the retardation of mobility, real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-RT PCR) was performed using more than 100 pairs of primer specific to genes directly associated with apoptosis, oncogenesis, and oxidative stress. Expression levels were altered for at least 8 folds for more than 50 genes tested in this study. To validate the correlation between magnetic field and apoptotic genes, ced-3, ced-6, and cbp-1mutant worms were obtained from CGC and were tested for their sensitivity to the magnetic field. Ced-3 mutant worm was insensitive to magnetic field, while ced-6 and cbp-1 mutant worms were sensitive to magnetic field. The lost of sensitivity to magnetic field in the ced-3 mutant strongly suggested that apoptosis was caused by the magnetic field and since ced-3 is lack of apoptosis thus is insensitive to the magnetic field. Sensitivity of ced-6 and cbp-1mutants was expected due to their assistant role in the apoptosis. In conclusion, the current study provided direct evidences that magnetic field caused apoptosis which led to the retardation for the mobility.