Abhay Singh Yadav and Shikha Jaggi
The buccal micronucleus cytome assay in exfoliated buccal cells is utilized as biomarkers for DNA damage, cell death and basal cell frequency. It offers great opportunity to evaluate genotoxicity by the way of quantifying mean frequencies of micronuclei, binucleated cell, broken egg, karyolysis, karyorrhexis, pycknosis and condensed chromatin. This assay is sensitive, minimally invasive, simple, cheap, easy and fast. It has precision and statistical power obtained from scoring large number of cells. Micronucleus assay has been extensively used to assess genetic damage due to lifestyle characteristics, occupational exposure, diseases and environmental risk. It also has applications in human biomonitoring, ecotoxicology, cancer risk assessment, pharmaceutical drug testing and the impacts of dietary micronutrients and micronutrient combinations on DNA damage. Fluorescence in situ hybridization is a valuable addition to micronucleus assay as combination of both enables us to characterize the genetic contents of the micronuclei. The present article reviews and updates on usefulness of buccal micronucleus cytome assay as a biomarker. It gives a detailed description of the methodology of buccal micronucleus test and analysis of the results. We also discussed the criteria for identification and classification of nuclear anomalies. We have also proposed the future directions namely high-throughput automation for further enhancing the reliability of micronucleus assay to be applicable on large scale experimental and epidemiological studies. It would help in overcoming many of the problems caused by inter-observer variability in evaluation of slides.
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