Cadmium toxicity causes alteration in mRNA expression pattern of Rho-like genes in human lung A549 cell line

Cadmium is a potent toxic heavy metal element which has apparently no constructive purpose in our body. Lung has been found to be a potential target of cadmium toxicity due to the presence of cadmium in cigarette smoke which puts both active as well as passive smokers at risk. In this report we studied the effect of cadmium on in vitro cultured human lung adenocarcinoma A549 cell line. Cells were exposed to different doses of cadmium chloride for 24-48 hours; and cell viability, morphological difference and expression pattern of Rho-like genes were compared with the unexposed healthy cells. The cells exhibited dose dependent responses for cell death, morphological differences and differential expression of Rho-like genes which are involved in deciding the cellular architecture. Our results not only demonstrated that cadmium stress leads to drastic changes in cellular morphology through differential expression of cell shape regulating Rho family genes, but also revealed that there is dose-dependent cadmium effect persisting the regulation of expression of these genes.