Susceptibility of male and female medaka (Oryzias latipes) fish to spontaneous and X-ray induced micronucleus formation in gill cells

The frequency of micronucleated cells (MNCs) was measured in acridine-orange (AO) stained RNA-rich gill cells from male and female medaka (Oryzias latipes) fish of known body weight. Spontaneous MNC frequencies were not significantly correlated with body weight, despite the fact that the heaviest of the 30 fish used outweighed the lightest by a factor of 3. Average MNC frequencies were identical in males and females at 0.8 per thousand. An X-ray dose of 4 Gy increased the frequency of MNCs over the spontaneous level in all 30 of the fish used, reaching a level of 7.2 per thousand on average when assayed 24 h after exposure. In X-ray treated fish, MNC frequency and body weight were not significantly correlated, nor was there any difference between the sexes. These and other results support our primary conclusion that AO-staining is suitable for the medaka micronucleus assay in gill cells, and indicate that male and female medaka fish are similarly and size-independently susceptible to both spontaneous and X-ray induced micronucleus formation in gill cells.