Project description:The main constituents of electronic cigarette liquids are nicotine, propylene glycol (PG), and vegetable glycerin (VG), together with distilled water and flavors. To assess the toxicity of PG/VG mixtures with and without nicotine as basic components of liquids used in e-cigarettes, a 90-day rat inhalation study according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development test guideline 413 was conducted. Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were nose-only exposed, 6 h/day, 5 days/week to filtered air, or nebulized vehicle (saline), or three concentrations of PG/VG (0.174 mg PG/l + 0.210 mg VG/l; 0.520 mg PG/l + 0.630 mg VG/l; 1.520 mg PG/l + 1.890 mg VG/l) – with (test item) and without (reference item) 23 µg nicotine/L. Standard toxicological endpoints were complemented by molecular analyses using transcriptomics, proteomics, and lipidomics. Compared to vehicle exposure, the tested PG/VG aerosols showed only very limited biological effects with no signs of toxicity, both for the standard toxicological endpoints (e.g., histopathology, clinical chemistry) and the systems toxicological analyses (transcriptomics, proteomics, and lipidomics). The addition of nicotine to the PG/VG aerosols (23 µg/l) resulted in effects in line with nicotine effects in previous studies. These included up-regulation of xenobiotic enzymes (Cyp1a1 and Fmo3) in the lung and metabolic effects, e.g., reduction in serum lipid concentrations and changes in the expression of metabolic enzymes in the liver. Signs of a generalized stress response to nicotine exposure such as decreased thymus weights were observed; and likely, a subset of the observed metabolic alterations was interlinked with this generalized stress response. Under the conditions of this 90-day SD rat inhalation study, no toxicologically relevant effects of PG/VG aerosols (up to 1.520 mg PG/l + 1.890 mg VG/l) were observed, and the no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) for PG/VG/nicotine was determined to be 438/544/6.7 mg/kg/day. Further the study demonstrated how complementary systems toxicology analyses can reveal, also in the absence of observable adverse effects, subtoxic and adaptive responses to pharmacologically active compounds such as nicotine.

Project description:The main constituents of electronic cigarette liquids are nicotine, propylene glycol (PG), and vegetable glycerin (VG), together with distilled water and flavors. To assess the toxicity of PG/VG mixtures with and without nicotine as basic components of liquids used in e-cigarettes, a 90-day rat inhalation study according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development test guideline 413 was conducted. Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were nose-only exposed, 6â€‰h/day, 5 days/week to filtered air, or nebulized vehicle (saline), or three concentrations of PG/VG (0.174 mg PG/l + 0.210 mg VG/l; 0.520 mg PG/l + 0.630 mg VG/l; 1.520 mg PG/l + 1.890 mg VG/l) with (test item) and without (reference item) 23 µg nicotine/L. Standard toxicological endpoints were complemented by molecular analyses using transcriptomics, proteomics, and lipidomics. Compared to vehicle exposure, the tested PG/VG aerosols showed only very limited biological effects with no signs of toxicity, both for the standard toxicological endpoints (e.g., histopathology, clinical chemistry) and the systems toxicological analyses (transcriptomics, proteomics, and lipidomics). The addition of nicotine to the PG/VG aerosols (23 Âµg/l) resulted in effects in line with nicotine effects in previous studies. These included up-regulation of xenobiotic enzymes (Cyp1a1 and Fmo3) in the lung and metabolic effects, e.g., reduction in serum lipid concentrations and changes in the expression of metabolic enzymes in the liver. Signs of a generalized stress response to nicotine exposure such as decreased thymus weights were observed; and likely, a subset of the observed metabolic alterations was interlinked with this generalized stress response. Under the conditions of this 90-day SD rat inhalation study, no toxicologically relevant effects of PG/VG aerosols (up to 1.520 mg PG/l + 1.890 mg VG/l) were observed, and the no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) for PG/VG/nicotine was determined to be 438/544/6.7 mg/kg/day. Further the study demonstrated how complementary systems toxicology analyses can reveal, also in the absence of observable adverse effects, subtoxic and adaptive responses to pharmacologically active compounds such as nicotine.

Project description:In honey bees, Vitellogenin (Vg) is hypothesized to be a major factor affecting hormone signaling, food-related behavior, immunity, stress resistance and lifespan. Likewise microRNAs play important roles in posttranscriptional gene regulation and affect many biological processes thereby showing many parallels to Vg functions. The molecular basis of Vg and microRNA interactions is largely unknown. Here, we exploited the well-established RNA interference (RNAi) protocol for Vg knockdown to investigate its effects on microRNA population in honey bee foragerM-bM-^@M-^Ys brain and fat body tissue. To identify microRNAs that are differentially expressed between tissues in control and knockdown foragers, we used M-BM-5ParafloM-BM-. microfluidic oligonucleotide microRNA microarrays. Our results show 76 and 74 miRNAs were expressed in the brain of control and knockdown foragers whereas 66 and 69 miRNAs were expressed in the fat body of control and knockdown foragers respectively. Target prediction identified potential seed matches for differentially expressed subset of microRNAs affected by Vg knockdown. These candidate genes are involved in a broad range of biological processes including insulin signaling, juvenile hormone (JH) and ecdysteroid signaling previously shown to affect foraging behavior. Thus, here we demonstrate a causal link between Vg expression-variation and variation in the abundance of microRNAs in different tissues with possible consequences for regulation of foraging behavior. We knocked down Vitellogenin (Vg) gene expression (using RNAi) in adult workers to identify potential downstream consequences on the expression of microRNA population in the fat body compared to control group (dsRNA-GFP injected bees). Six biological samples of fat body-derived small RNA fraction were prepared for each treatment group (dsRNA-Vg and dsRNA-GFP). Each biological sample contained pooled RNA from 5 unique individuals. Each fat body pool contained a total of 2 M-BM-5g of small RNA fraction, to which each of the 5 individuals contributed equally (400 ng). Pools were named as M-bM-^@M-^\control forager fat bodyM-bM-^@M-^] (GFFb) and M-bM-^@M-^\knockdown forager fat bodyM-bM-^@M-^] (VFFb), followed by a number from 1 to 6.

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