Screening Methods for Toxic Substances,

摘要

The present report deals with the application of fluorescent probe technique to the detection of conformational changes in rat brain synaptosomes under the influence of certain neurotoxic chemicals, chlorophenothane (DDT) and diphenylhydantoin,which are expected to produce functional changes in nerve membranes. Pretreatment of the rats with (1) a single dose of DDT capable of producing neurological symptoms and (2) repeated sub-lethal doses of DDT did not alter the fluorescence characteristics of the hydrophobic probe 8-anilino-1-naphthalene sulfonic acid (ANS) bound to the synaptosomes. DDT treatment also showed no effect on native protein fluorescence of synaptosomes. Exposure of synaptosomes to diphenylhydantoint in vitro did not induce conformational changes as measured by ANS and intrinsic fluorescence.