Meeting Abstract
BPA is a common environmental contaminant that is known to disrupt development as, for example, in mice where BPA acts as both an endocrine disruptor and also by demethylating DNA. This raises the question of what effect BPA has on the development of estuarine invertebrates as most estuaries are exposed to BPA in wastewater discharge. Also, recent work has found that BPA bioaccumulates in some marine species. We tested the effects of BPA on regeneration in Pygospio elegans, a spionid polychaete that is abundant in estuaries and tidal flats of the North Atlantic. P. elegans exposed to BPA had delayed blastema formation and growth, relative to controls, and preliminary results suggest this is due to inhibition of mitosis (Click-It Plus Edu cell proliferation kit). Subsequent treatment with folate/ vitamin B12 ‘rescued’ blastema development leading to complete regeneration. These results suggest that BPA disrupts regeneration by inhibiting typical cell cycles, but also, that these effects may be reversed in early blastema formation by exposing the worms to a different environment.
