MUTATION RESEARCH-GENETIC TOXICOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MUTAGENESIS, cilt.759, ss.43-50, 2014 (SCI-Expanded)
Mixed air pollutants are considered a major cause of DNA damage in living organisms. In this study, samples of the lichen Pseudevernia furfuracea (L) Zopf were used as bioindicators to assess the genotoxicity of air pollutants in the province of Central Anatolia, Kayseri. The study area is characterized by the presence of numerous industrial activities, such as steel works, glassworks, and ship-building, metallurgical, mechanical and chemical industries. In the study, two biomonitoring experiments were performed during the dry and wet seasons of 2005. P. furfuracea lichen samples were exposed to various pollutants at 12 monitoring sites, distributed throughout the different parts of the province, and each experiment lasted for a period of four weeks. Genotoxic effects of environmental pollutants were evaluated with amplified fragment-length polymorphism (AFLP) molecular markers. The results indicate that the mixture of pollutants might have contributed to the changes in the band patterns obtained by AFLP analysis, reflecting the presence of DNA damage. The average value of polymorphism obtained from the amplification of the primers used was 45.0% for the wet period and 64.6% for the dry period.