ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1657527
Phoxim Induces Neurotoxicity and Intestinal Damage in Caenorhabditis elegans
Provisionally accepted
- School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China
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To investigate the effects of different doses of phoxim contamination on the survival rate, dopamine-secreting neurons, Aβ-induced paralysis, and intestinal tract of Caenorhabditis elegans. 0 , 0.5, 1, 2.5 µg/mL phoxim staining to detect changes in nematode survival, fluorescence microscopy to observe changes in the nerve cord of BZ555 nematode and paralysis of CL4176 nematode, RNAi interference to reduce the expression of eat-2 gene to detect changes in survival, QPCR to detect the transcription of autophagy-related genes, lgg-1::GFP nematode to observe the situation of autophagic vesicles, and Food Blue staining of nematode intestines and observation of intestinal damage.Nematode mortality was significantly increased by 0.5, 1, and 2.5 µg/mL phoxim. The number of nerve cords of dopamine-secreting neurons of BZ555 nematode was reduced from 4 to 2 by 2.5 µg/mL octenphos. 0.5 and 1 µg/mL octenphos caused paralysis of all CL4176 nematodes at 32 and 36 h. 1 and 2.5 µg/mL octenphos caused intestinal damage to 46.7% and 68.3% of the nematodes, and 1 µg/mL octenphos decreased the number of enterocytes and autophagosomes from 1.8 to 1.3. vsp-34, atat-34, and atat-34 were also damaged.Autophagic vesicles were reduced from 1.8 to 1.3, and vsp-34, atg-13, 1 and unc-51 gene transcripts were down-regulated to 0.53-fold, 0.43-fold, and 0.36-fold of those of the control group.Phoxim dyes caused a decrease in the number of dopamine-secreting neuronal nerve cords and accelerated Alzheimer's β-amyloid (Aβ)-induced paralysis in the nematode Cryptomeria cepacia, and chronic intake of phoxim caused nematode intestinal damage through inhibition of intestinal cell autophagy.
Keywords: Phoxim, Caenorhabditis elegans, Autophagy, Neurotoxicity, Intestinal damage
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 ZHANG, Zhao, Bai, Wang and Zou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Qi Wang, School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China
Wei Zou, School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China
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