Identification of pararosaniline as a modifier of RNA splicing in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Posttranscriptional splicing of premessenger RNA (mRNA) is an evolutionarily conserved eukaryotic process for producing mature mRNA that is translated into proteins. Accurate splicing is necessary for normal growth and development, and aberrant splicing is increasingly evident in various human pathologies. To study environmental factors that influence RNA splicing, we employed a fluorescent Caenorhabditis elegans in vivo splicing reporter as a biomarker for splicing fidelity to screen against the US EPA ToxCast chemical library.

High-throughput identification of oxidative stress-inducing environmental chemicals in the C. elegans system.

The metabolism of xenobiotic chemicals from the environment can produce reactive oxygen species leading to oxidative stress that is detrimental to the cell. To study the environmental factors that influence oxidative stress, we employed C. elegans engineered with a GFP tagged to the glutathione s-transferase 4 gene encoding a phase II enzyme as a biomarker for oxidative stress to screen against the U.