Tobacco smoking is associated with many diseases, including addiction which is of the most notorious. The tobacco dependence is majorly attributed to nicotine, which is considered one of the most addictive chemicals. In our study, we chose C. elegans as a biological model to systemically investigate the effect of chronic nicotine exposure and their regulated biochemical pathway. Nicotine treatment (20 �M and 20 mM) was limited to the post-embryonic stage from L1-L4 (~31 hours) period after which worms were collected for genome-wide miRNA profiling. Our results show that nicotine significantly altered the expression patterns of 40 miRNAs. The effect was proportional to the nicotine dose and was expected to have an additive, more robust response. Based on pathway enrichment analysis coupled with nicotine-induced miRNA patterns, we inferred that miRNAs as a system mediates �regulatory hormesis�, manifested in biphasic behavioral and physiological phenotypes. We proposed a model where nicotine addiction is mediated by miRNAs' regulation of fos-1 and is maintained by epigenetic factors. Thus, our study offers new insights for a better understanding of the sensitivity of early developmental stages to nicotine.

Chronic nicotine exposure systemically alters micro-RNA expression profiles during post-embryonic stages in <i>C. elegans</i>

246th National Meeting (2013)

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Chronic nicotine exposure systemically alters micro-RNA expression profiles during post-embryonic stages in C. elegans