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The topoisomerase II (topo II) inhibitors etoposide (VP-16) and merbarone (MER) were investigated with the in vivo micronucleus test (MN test) combined with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) using the mouse minor satellite DNA probe to discriminate MN of clastogenic and aneugenic origin. All experiments were performed with male (102/ElxC3H/El) F1 mice bred in the mouse colony of the GSF Research Center. The sample size per experimental group was five animals and 2,000 polychromatic erythrocytes (PCE) were scored per animal from coded slides in the conventional MN test. A separate set of coded slides was used for the FISH analysis. All treatments consisted of single intraperitoneal injections. Colchicine (COL, 3 mg/kg) and mitomycin (MMC, 1 mg/kg) were used as a positive control aneugen and clastogen, respectively, and these compounds produced the expected responses. A dose of 1 mg/kg VP-16 induced 3.44% MNPCE (compared to the concurrent solvent control of 0.37%, P < 0.001) and of these 39.9% (1.4% MNPCE) showed one or more fluorescent signals. MER (7.5-60 mg/kg) increased the MNPCE frequencies in a dose-dependent manner, with 15 mg/kg being the lowest positive dose. At the highest dose of 60 mg/kg of MER, a total of 4.26% MNPCE were found (compared to 0.31% in the concurrent solvent control, P < 0.001) and of these 46.2% (2.0% MNPCE) contained one or more fluorescent signals. The data demonstrate that VP-16 and MER induced both clastogenic and aneugenic events despite their different modes of topo II inhibition.

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In the mouse bone marrow micronucleus assay, it was studied whether micronuclei (MN) could be expelled from polychromatic erythrocytes (PCE) in a similar way to the main nucleus. To avoid the disrupting centrifugation step of the conventional bone marrow preparation procedure, the paintbrush technique was used in the present experiments. With May-Grunwald-Giemsa staining of paintbrush slides, 5 % of the colchicine (COL)-induced MN were found attached to the outside membranes of PCE and were regarded as extruded. Of the acrylamide (AA)-induced MN, 22% were extruded. After fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) of a total of 300 MN per chemical treatment with the mouse minor and major satellite DNA probes, 9.7% MN were extruded in the COL group and 8.3% MN were extruded in the AA group. FISH showed that 76% of the retained COL-induced MN were signal-positive, indicating that they contained entire chromosomes. With AA, 29% minor-positive and 28.3 % major-positive retained MN were found, confirming its known clastogenicity. However, the observed frequency of signal-positive MN (1.7 MNPCE(pos)/ 1000 PCE) in the AA group was about three times higher than in the control (0.5 MNPCE(pos)/1000 PCE) which indicates that AA has aneugenic potential. FISH analysis of the extruded MN showed 72-100% major as well as minor signals. It is concluded that expelled MN contain mostly entire chromosomes.

No abstract