An investigation on genotoxic potential of silver and cobalt nanoparticles and their ionic forms with COMET assay

Due to developing technology in recent years manufacturing of nanoparticles (NP, <100 nm) as a new technological product and their usage in different fields has increased. Nano in literal meaning is one billionth of meter and has width of 10 atoms. NP's define as small particles which have maximum 100 nm or under 100 nm size and special features due to the order of their extent. In spite of NP's widely usage in very different fields due to their many advantages knowledge about their effects on environment and human health is insufficient. Therefore, it is important to detect these high-tech materials genotoxic potential in terms of their bio-safety. At the present day, it is known that mutations and induced recombination are related to many diseases. Hence, detection of these materials effects is important in point of common health. For this reason, in this study we determined three different concentrations of two different nano-sized Silver (Ag: 15 and 40 nm) and Cobalt (Co: 15 and 50 nm) NPs' and their ionic forms which commonly used in nanotechnology in consideration of literature data and preliminary application with COMET or also known as SCGE (Single Cell Gel Electrophoresis) assay. We investigated these determined concentrations effects on single strand damage in DNA on human peripheral blood lymphocytes (0.01, 0.1 and 1 mM) and Drosophila melanogaster hemocytes (0.1, 1 and 10 mM). Also with the COMET assay, oxidative DNA damage was also analysed by using bacterial enzymes, formamidopyrimidine DNA glycosilase (FPG) which specifically recognizes the number of oxidized purine bases and endonuclease III (endo III) which specifically recognizes the number of oxidized pyrimidine bases. Consequently, after the COMET assay on both human peripheral blood lymphocytes and D. melanogaster hemocytes, it has been observed that both different nano-sized Ag and Co NPs' and their ionic forms the highest concentrations in gereral would create genotoxic and oxidative DNA damage.