Genotoxicity evaluation of titanium dioxide nanoparticles using the Ames test and Comet assay

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) are being used increasingly for various industrial and consumer products, including cosmetics and sunscreens because of their photoactive properties. Therefore, the toxicity of TiO2-NPs needs to be thoroughly understood. In the present study, the genotoxicity of 10nm uncoated sphere TiO2-NPs with an anatase crystalline structure, which has been well characterized in a previous study, was assessed using the Salmonella reverse mutation assay (Ames test) and the single-cell gel electrophoresis (Comet) assay. For the Ames test, Salmonella strains TA102, TA100, TA1537, TA98 and TA1535 were preincubated with eight different concentrations of the TiO2-NPs for 4 h at 37 °C, ranging from 0 to 4915.2 µg per plate. No mutation induction was found. Analyses with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) showed that the TiO2-NPs were not able to enter the bacterial cell. For the Comet assay, TK6 cells were treated with 0-200 µg ml(-1) TiO2-NPs for 24 h at 37 °C to detect DNA damage. Although the TK6 cells did take up TiO2-NPs, no significant induction of DNA breakage or oxidative DNA damage was observed in the treated cells using the standard alkaline Comet assay and the endonuclease III (EndoIII) and human 8-hydroxyguanine DNA-glycosylase (hOGG1)-modified Comet assay, respectively. These results suggest that TiO2-NPs are not genotoxic under the conditions of the Ames test and Comet assay.