Atrazine induces homologous recombination but not point mutation in the transgenic plant-based biomonitoring assay

Herbicides, such as atrazine, are extensively used in agriculture in order to suppress growth of weeds. From the soil they inevitably find their way to water supplies, leading to human exposure, via drinking water. Therefore, it is extremely important to know whether those chemicals pose any hazard to public health. The genotoxicity., of atrazine has been a subject of studies in recent years. However, the data that are currently available are inconclusive. There is a need to examine the genotoxicity of low, environmentally relevant concentrations that are currently assumed to be safe. Up to date, studying the genotoxicity of low concentrations of atrazine has constituted a great challenge due to the lack of appropriate, sensitive test systems. In the present work, we used a new sensitive transgenic plant-based system to study the genotoxicity and mutagenicity of atrazine present at minute concentrations in the liquid media. This system gave us an opportunity to monitor the two main types of rearrangements, the frequency of homologous recombination and point mutations, which are indicators of the genotoxicity of atrazine. Atrazine present at low concentrations was found to be a strong inducer of homologous recombination. On the other hand, it did not have a significant influence on the levels of A --> G and T --> G mutations. These results suggest that the transgenic plant-based biomonitoring system is a useful tool for analyzing the genotoxicity of water contaminated by atrazine. In the future this system can be used to study molecular mechanisms of genotoxicity and mutagenicity atrazine and other triazine herbicides.