Effect Of Extremely Low Frequency Magnetic Fields On Gene Expression In Human Mammary Epithelial Mcf10a Cells

The effects of extremely low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MFs) on physiological processes at the cellular level remain unclear despite a number of studies. To investigate the effects of ELF-MFs on gene expression, we exposed human mammary epithelial MCF10A cells to fields of 1 mT magnetic flux density at 60 Hz for 4 and 16 h and measured the transcriptional responses of 24,000 genes using Illumina microarrays. In three independent experiments, we found no statistically significant alteration of expression levels for any of the genes assayed using a cutoff value of 1.2-fold. To confirm this result, we selected six genes with trends suggesting possible expression level changes, although these trends were not statistically significant, and investigated their expression levels further using a semi-quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. In three independent experiments, we did not find any alterations in the expression levels of these genes. From these results, we conclude that ELF-MFs do not affect gene expression profiles under our exposure conditions.