Morphological and ultrastructural effects of microcystin-LR from Microcystis aeruginosa extract on a kidney cell line

The Kidney Vero-E6 Cell Line: A Suitable Model to Study the Toxicity of Microcystins

“…In our articles, we proposed that at lower MCLR concentrations, autophagy is triggered as a survival mechanism of Vero cells, in an attempt to eliminate the toxin or/and the MCLR-induced cellular damages [29,30]. Also, we reported the vacuolization of the Golgi apparatus and cytoplasm, effects also previously described in MCLR-exposed hepatocytes [17,18].…”

“…Also, we reported the vacuolization of the Golgi apparatus and cytoplasm, effects also previously described in MCLR-exposed hepatocytes [17,18]. The disorganization of the microfilaments and microtubules, which is one of the most commonly described cytotoxic effects of MCLR in hepatic cells [34][35][36], was also triggered by MCLR in Vero cells [29,30]. The observation that MCLR induced the destructuring of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) suggested that this organelle is involved in MCLR toxicity in Vero cell line [29,30].…”

“…In our studies with Vero-E6 cell line we have consistently observed that MCLR induces a concentration-dependent decrease of cell viability [26,27,29,30]. This was achieved using distinct cell viability assays (MTT, Neutral Red and LDH release) and distinct toxin sources (commercially available MCLR and M. aeruginosa extracts).…”

“…This was achieved using distinct cell viability assays (MTT, Neutral Red and LDH release) and distinct toxin sources (commercially available MCLR and M. aeruginosa extracts). We observed that the most sensitive methods for cytotoxicity evaluation were MTT and Neutral Red assays [26,27,29] and that the response of pure toxin and cyanobacterial extracts was quite similar with cytotoxic thresholds within 22-50 µM of MCLR ( Table 1). The MCLR-induced loss of Vero-E6 viability was attributed to apoptosis and necrosis [29,30] as widely described for various cell types in vitro and in vivo [18,31,32].…”

“…Surprisingly, we observed that the dose-response curve of cell viability decrease induced by MCLR was quite similar in Vero-E6 and in liver-derived cell lines [26]. Since then, we have been demonstrated that MCLR induces a multiplicity of effects on Vero cells within a wide range of concentrations [26][27][28][29][30], according to a dose-effect relationship ( Figure 3). …”