A High-throughput Assay for the Prediction of Chemical Toxicity by Automated Phenotypic Profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans

Summary

A quantitative method has been developed to identify and predict the acute toxicity of chemicals by automatically analyzing the phenotypic profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans. This protocol describes how to treat worms with chemicals in a 384-well plate, capture videos, and quantify toxicological related phenotypes.

Abstract

Applying toxicity testing of chemicals in higher order organisms, such as mice or rats, is time-consuming and expensive, due to their long lifespan and maintenance issues. On the contrary, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) has advantages to make it an ideal choice for toxicity testing: a short lifespan, easy cultivation, and efficient reproduction. Here, we describe a protocol for the automatic phenotypic profiling of C. elegans in a 384-well plate. The nematode worms are cultured in a 384-well plate with liquid medium and chemical treatment, and videos are taken of each well to quantify the chemical influence on 33 worm features. Experimental results demonstrate that the quantified phenotype features can classify and predict the acute toxicity for different chemical compounds and establish a priority list for further traditional chemical toxicity assessment tests in a rodent model.

Introduction

Along with the rapid development of chemical compounds applied to industrial production and people's daily life, it is important to study the toxicity testing models for the chemicals. In many cases, the rodent animal model is employed to evaluate the potential toxicity of different chemicals on health. In general, the determination of lethal concentrations (i.e., the assayed 50% lethal dose [LD50] of different chemicals) is used as the traditional parameter in a rodent (rat/mouse) model in vivo, which is time-consuming and very expensive. In addition, due to the reduce, refine, or replace (3R) principle that is central to animal welfare and ethics, new metho....

Protocol

The protocol follows the animal care guidelines of the Animal Ethics Committee of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control in China.

1. Chemical preparation

1. Obtain chemicals (Table 1 and Table of Materials).
2. Determine the highest and lowest dosage of the individual chemicals for a minimum concentration of 100% lethality (LC100, 24 h) and a maximum concentration of 100% nonlethality (LC0, 24 h) to worms. Use at least six dilutions of the highest concentration (Table 1).
   NOTE: Conduct a preliminary worm lethality test⁹ to explo....

Results

We have tested the phenotypes of worms exposed to different concentrations of more than 10 chemicals¹². In the test, 33 distinct features were quantified for each chemical compound at three time points (0 h, 12 h, and 24 h). Previously, a comparison between a manual and an automatic analysis of a lifespan assay was done^11,12. In this assay, we found that chemicals and concentrations can influence the worm p.......

Discussion

The advantages of C. elegans have led to its increasing usage in toxicology⁹, both for mechanistic studies and high-throughput screening approaches. An increased role for C. elegans in complementing other model systems in toxicological research has been remarkable in recent years, especially for the rapid toxicity assessment of new chemicals. This article provides a new assay of high-throughput, quantitative screening of worm phenotypes in a 384-well plate for the automatic ident.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
2-Propanol	Sigma-Aldrich	59300
384-well plates	Throme	142761
Agar	Bacto	214010
Atropine sulfate	Sigma-Aldrich	PHL80892
Bleach buffer			0.5 mL of 10 M NaOH, 0.5 mL of5% NaClO, 9 mL ofultrapure water
Cadmium chloride	Sigma-Aldrich	202908
Calcium chloride	Sigma-Aldrich	21074
CCD camera	Zeiss	AxioCam HRm	Zeiss microscopy GmbH
Cholesterol	Sigma-Aldrich	C8667
Copper(II) sulfate	Sigma-Aldrich	451657
Ethanol	Sigma-Aldrich	24105
Ethylene glycol	Sigma-Aldrich	324558
Glycerol	Sigma-Aldrich	G5516
K-Medium			3.04 g of NaCl and 2.39 g of KCl in 1 L ultrapure water
LB Broth			10 g/L Tryptone, 5 g/L Yeast Extract, 5 g/L NaCl
Magnesium sulfate heptahydrate	Sigma-Aldrich	63140
NGM Plate			3 g ofNaCl, 17 g ofagar, 2.5 g ofpeptone in 1 L of ultrapure water, after autoclave add 1 mL of cholesterol (5 mg/mL in ethanol), 1 mL of MgSO4 (1 M), 1 mL of CaCl2 (1 M), 25 mL of PPB buffer
Peptone	Bacto	211677
Potassium chloride	Sigma-Aldrich	60130
Potassium phosphate dibasic	Sigma-Aldrich	795496
Potassium phosphate monobasic	Sigma-Aldrich	795488
PPB buffer			35.6 g of K2HPO4, 108.3 g of KH2PO4 in 1 L ultrapure water
shaker	ZHICHENG	ZWY-200D
Sodium chloride	Sigma-Aldrich	71382
Sodium fluoride	Sigma-Aldrich	s7920
Sodium hydroxide	Sigma-Aldrich	71690
Sodium hypochlorite solution	Sigma-Aldrich	239305
The link of program			https://github.com/weiyangc/ImageProcessForWellPlate
Tryptone	Sigma-Aldrich	T7293
Yeast extract	Sigma-Aldrich	Y1625
Zeiss automatic microscope	Zeiss	AXIO Observer.Z1	Zeiss automatic microsco with peproprietary software Zen2012 and charge coupled device(CCD) camera