In plants, an increasing interest for the comet assay was shown in the last decade. This versatile technique appears to be promising to detect the genotoxic effect of pollutants and to monitor the environment. However, the lack of a standardised protocol and the low throughput of the assay limit its use in plants. The aims of this paper are to identify key factors affecting comet assay performa...

Background: We aimed to assess the level of DNA damage and susceptibility to exogenous mutagens in peripheral blood cells of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients and healthy individuals by comet assay. Oxidative stress was also evaluated by means of thiobarbituric acid reactive species (TBARS) in blood plasma. Methods: Case-control study enrolling 51 COPD patients and 51 contro...

Reactive species such as free radicals are constantly generated in vivo and DNA is the most important target of oxidative stress. Oxidative DNA damage is used as a predictive biomarker to monitor the risk of development of many diseases. The comet assay is widely used for measuring oxidative DNA damage at a single cell level. The analysis of comet assay output images, however, poses considerabl...

Antineoplastic drugs are hazardous chemical agents used mostly in the treatment of patients with cancer, however health professionals that handle and administer these drugs can become exposed and develop DNA damage. Comet assay is a standard method for assessing DNA damage in human biomonitoring and, combined with formamidopyrimidine DNA glycosylase (FPG) enzyme, it specifically detects DNA oxi...

The single cell gel electrophoresis or Comet assay is one of the most popular techniques for genotoxicity assessment. The present study was undertaken to validate our previously modified version of the Comet assay for genotoxicity assessment in Drosophila melanogaster (Oregon R(+)) with four well-known mutagenic and carcinogenic alkylating agents, i.e. ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS), methyl metha...

The alkaline comet assay or single cell microgel electrophoresis assay is a sensitive method of detecting DNA strand breaks and alkali labile sites in individual cells. The results of this assay can be analysed by different methods. In this study we compared analyses of the same slides by a manual method and by image analysis, post-treatment of clone 707 Friend erythroleukaemia cells with H2O2....

Recently, we developed an improved comet assay protocol for evaluating single-strand break repair capacity (SSB-RC) in unstimulated cryopreserved human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). This methodology facilitates control of interexperimental variability [A.R. Trzeciak, J. Barnes, M.K. Evans, A modified alkaline comet assay for measuring DNA repair capacity in human populations. Radi...

• Pre-validation study on comet assay for detecting site of contact genotoxicity. Acrylic implants containing EMS (AF + EMS) was used as test item. AF showed DNA damage at using whereas negative Ames and chromosome aberration test. Implants may cause ‘site genotoxicity’ without systemic Comet has potential use in medical device biocompatibility assessment. Toxicological risk assessment devices ...

The Comet assay has been used widely in genetic toxicology, radiation biology and medical and environmental research. This assay detects single-strand breaks and alkali-labile sites in DNA and DNA degradation due to necrosis or apoptosis. It may also be modified to detect DNA cross-linking. Although a considerable number of chemicals have been tested in the assay there are many aspects of valid...