Capillary electrophoretic determination of apoptosis of HeLa cells inducedby trichosanthin

Apoptosis is a distinct mode of cell death that is responsible for deletion of cells in normal tissues; it also occurs in specific pathologic contexts . The observation of apoptosis is very important in the research of cancer and cancer therapy. The traditional observation method of apoptosis was aga rose gel electrophoresis, which is depending on the determination of ladder -liking DNA fragments extracted from apoptotic cells. It is time-consuming and low-sensitive. Recently, the sieving capillary electrophoresis has been used to detect apoptosis too. However, the problem of DNA fragments contam ination is still existing. Here, we have developed a capillary electrophore sis method that could detect apoptosis of whole cell directly and do not ne ed to extract DNA fragments from cells. Apoptosis of adherent cell HeLa cel l of carcinoma induced by cyclophosphamide was used as the model to establi sh the method. The effluence of medicine concentration on apoptosis of cell s was studied in detail. It was also found that the method could detect the change of cells in the early period of apoptosis. The induction of apoptos is of HeLa cell by trichosanthin was determined with the method, and the re sult of flow cytometry was also proved that trichosanthin could result in a poptosis of HeLa cells. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.