Developmental neurotoxicity of environmental chemicals : Development of an evaluation method through toxicogenomic approach

为了开发一种有效的方法来评估化学物质的发育神经毒性，我们使用原始寡核苷酸芯片分析了胎儿暴露于三丁基锡（TBT）或沙利度胺的大鼠大脑中的基因表达变化。实验选择了约450个发育调控基因，并将基因特异性45-mer寡核苷酸探针定位到微阵列上。结果表明，两种化学物质对大脑区域和基因群的敏感性存在显著差异，表明该方法可以有效检测和区分两种不同机制产生的神经毒性。

In order to develop an efficient method to evaluate developmental neurotoxicity of chemicals, we analyzed gene expression changes in the brain of rats fetally exposed to tributyl tin (TBT) or thalidomide using original oligonucleotide microarrays. About 450 developmentally regulated genes were selected experimentally, and gene-specific 45-mer oligonucletide probes were spotted onto microarrays. The results showed that sensitivity of brain regions and gene groups were significantly different between the 2 chemicals, indicating that neurotoxicity arising from 2 different mechanisms could be effectively detected and distinguished by this method.