Monitoring of inland waters - Comet

Single cell gel electrophoresis or comet assay is a rapid and sensitive method for detection of DNA single-strand breaks and double-strand breaks, alkali labile sites, which are the consequence of direct DNA damage or they occur as intermediates formed during the repair of DNA lesions. The method is appropriate for testing of the ability of different compounds and environmental samples to induce DNA damage. Comet assay can be performed on several cell lines (e.g. human hepatoma cell line HepG2, Chinese hamster ovarian cells CHO, human lymphocytes etc.) at different testing conditions, depending on the purpose of the test.