Abstract
Drosophila melanogaster (D. melanogaster), commonly known as the fruit fly, has been used as a model organism to assess the impacts of endocrine disrupting chemicals on human development due to their relatively simple brain structure and measurable behaviors. In most experimental designs, it is the chemical exposure that is known, as opposed to the concentration of the chemical of interest in the organism itself. Here, the methodology is described for the quantification of bisphenol A (BPA) in D. Melanogaster larvae. The final method was optimized for the concentration and flow rate of NH4OH post-column infusion, mass of sodium sulfate, larval mass, and calibration range. The method detection limit for the final optimized method is 2.13 ng/mL with an instrumental limit of detection of 0.45 ng/mL and limit of quantification of 1.45 ng/mL. The quality controls exhibited recoveries that comprised between 32-57%. The final optimized method was applied to quantitate BPA content on a mass (ng BPA/g larvae) and per-larvae (ng/BPA per larvae) basis. The BPA concentration measured in wild-type (w1118) larvae that had been exposed to 0.1 mM BPA was 306.8 ng BPA/g larvae (0.473 ng BPA/per larvae). Larvae exposed to 0.5 mM BPA were found to have 658.9 ng BPA/g larvae (0.942 ng BPA/per larvae) in the 0.5 mM BPA exposed larvae. The 1 mM BPA-exposed larvae contained 559.9 ng BPA/g larvae (0.833 ng BPA/per larvae). Flies carrying a mutation in Fmr1 (fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein 1) were also examined following exposure to 1 mM BPA; these larvae had 361.0 ng BPA/g larvae (0.835 ng BPA/per larvae).