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Abstract
The creation of herbicide-resistant genetically modified crops has significantly increased the amount of people being exposed to glyphosate-based herbicides. Currently, there is a debate about whether glyphosate has negative health effects, but very little research has been conducted on products containing it as a whole. This research aimed to test the effects of Roundup, a common glyphosate-based herbicide, on oxidative stress in NIH3T3 cells. Oxidative stress is known to cause cellular damage and has been linked to glyphosate but has not been previously studied with a glyphosate-based herbicide as a whole. It was hypothesized that exposure to Roundup would increase the amount of oxidative stress due to the other potentially harmful effects it can have. NIH3T3 cells were exposed to a 1:5000 concentration of Roundup for 21 hours and 30 minutes in a 96 well plate. Cells with no Roundup were cultured in a separate 96 well plate to serve as a control. Cells were stained with ThermoFisher Scientific’s CellROX Green Reagent fluorescent oxidative stress assay. A microplate reader was used to generate absorbance values at 490 nanometers for each well in order to quantify oxidative stress. After a two sample one-tailed t-test was performed for statistical analysis with the p-value 0.00037, it was concluded that the experimental group exposed to Roundup had significantly more oxidative stress than the control. Future research should involve investigating whether the oxidative stress negatively impacted the cells in order to better make a conclusion on the health effects of Roundup.
Keywords: Glyphosate, Glyphosate-based herbicide, NIH3T3, cell culture, CellROX Green Reagent, Oxidative stress, Genetically modified crops
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