Comparative toxicogenomic effects of three IMX-101 constituents DNAN, NTO and NQ on C. elegans. Caenorhabditis elegans

We used the soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a well-characterized genomics model organism, as the test organism and a species-specific, genome-wide 44K-oligo probe microarray for gene expression analysis. Our goal was to discern toxicological mechanisms for three insensitive munitions formulation IMX-101 constituents 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN), nitroguanidine (NQ) and nitrotriazolone (NTO) at the molecular level. Overall design: Gene expression profiling was performed immediately after the 24-hr exposure for each chemical at the lowest, medium and highest sublethal concentrations plus the control with four replicates per treatment. Six 8 x 60K formatted slides (each 60K array containing 44K control and non-control probes, i.e., 27% spots empty) were used. Total RNA samples were randomized when hybridized to the arrays.