[Study on the formaldehyde-induced DNA damage with comet assay].

Formaldehyde is known as a genotoxic substance. Numerous studies have shown that formaldehyde could induce DNA-DNA and DNA-protein crosslinks. However, scholars have disagreed with each other on the formaldehyde-induced DNA strand breaks. We chose buccal cells as materials to evaluate the genotoxicity of formaldehyde with comet assay--especially for DNA strand breaks. The results showed that formaldehyde of low concentration induced DNA strand breaks, while formaldehyde of high concentration induced DNA-DNA and DNA-protein crosslinks. According to our experimental results, we proposed the concept of the "peak point of break" at which formaldehyde induced DNA strand breaks most.