| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
HOSONO Ryuji Kanazawa Univ., Sch.Health Sci., Dept.Bioinformatics Professor, 医学部, 教授 (40019617)
YAMADA Sotoshi Kanazawa Univ., Faculty Tech., Lab.Mag.Field Contr.Appl., Visiting Professor, 工学部, 教授 (80019786)
TANIMOTO Yoshifumi Hiroshima Univ., Faculty Sci., Dept.Chem.Professor, 理学部, 教授 (10110743)
YONEKURA Hideto Kanazawa Univ., Sch.Med., Dept.Biochem.Associate Professor, 医学部, 助教授 (80240373)
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| Research Abstract |
Recent advances in electrotechnology have given rise to previously unexperienced environments, in which strong magnetic fields are encountered. To test their effects on biological processes, we developed equipment by which alternating-current high magnetic stimuli can be administered with the physiological temperature being kept constant. Experiments with a simple multicellular organism, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, revealed that an exposure to a 1.7 T peak flux density modestly inhibited the animal's growth as well as reproduction, and caused transient derangement in its locomotor behavior. However, all of these phenotypic changes were reversible. Neither lethal nor mutagenic effects were noticed. The life span was not affected by the magnetic exposure. Next, DNA polymerase-catalyzed DNA synthesis, mutS-dependent DNA mismatch repair and RNA polymerase-catalyzed RNA transcription were conducted in vitro in the presence or absence of magnetic exposure. Neither the rates and fidelities of DNA and RNA syntheses nor the efficiency of DNA repair were affected by high magnetic fields. The results suggest that the living organism and the basic genic reactions would seem to be relatively resistant to, or to well compensate for, the high magnetic fields. In a transgenic nematode, however, a heat-shock promoter was found to be inducible by the exposure to high magnetic fields, this indicating that magnetic stimuli could offer a stress to the living organism.
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