Crude oil is an important natural resource for society, providing multiple uses for everyday life. However, many chemicals, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) within crude oil have profound toxic effects. Therefore, this study aims to quantitatively determine the concentration of PAH compounds within crude oil samples from the Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico utilizing gas chromatography in tandem with mass spectroscopy. GCMS results indicated the 100× and 200× oil samples had 13 of the 17 PAHs in a standard. The concentrations of these PAHs in the 100× sample are as follows: naphthalene (7800 ng/mL), acenaphthylene (590 ng/mL), acenaphtehen (540 ng/mL), fluorene (2550 ng/mL), phenanthrene (2910 ng/mL), anthracene (840 ng/mL), fluoranthene (490 ng/mL), pyrene (290 ng/mL), benzo(k)fluoranthene (1050 ng/mL), benzo(b)fluoranthene (1360 ng/mL), dibenz(a,h)anthracene (2560 ng/mL), and benzo(g, h, i) perylene (630 ng/mL). In order to examine the toxic effects of individual PAHs, the free-living nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), was employed to examine germ cell apoptosis. The MD701 (bcIs39 [(lim-7)ced-1p::GFP + lin-15) strain was treated with the highest concentrated PAH (naphthalene) and the model PAH compound benzo(a)pyrene. Germ cell apoptosis significantly increased on average from 1.36 to 2.47 cells when worms were treated with 10 μg/mL of naphthalene and from 1.32 to 2.48 and 3.52 cells in 1 μg/mL and 5 μg/mL of benzo(a)pyrene, respectively. In order for PAH compounds to induce apoptosis, they must be bioactivated via cytochrome P450s. The expressions of five CYP450 genes within the C. elegans genome (CYP14A3, CYP35A1, CYP35A2, CYP35A5, and CYP35C1) were tested in response to a 50× of dispersed oil (oil-dis). The oil-dis mixture induced a significant expression of all genes (p &lt; 0.05). These results indicate one mechanism for C. elegans germ cell apoptosis is PAH-induced DNA damage via the increased expression of the cytochrome P450 genes.

PAH compounds identified in crude oil utilizing GCMS induce germ cell apoptosis in Caenorhabditis elegans

254th National Meeting (2017)

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