Tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate disturbs mouse embryonic development by inducing apoptosis and abnormal DNA methylation.

Tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TDCPP) is a kind of additive flame retardants (FRs) and was found to affect early embryonic development in zebrafish; however, there are few studies to investigate whether TDCPP will disturb the development of early mouse embryos. In our studies, we used mouse embryos as models to study the toxicology of TDCPP on the early embryos. The results showed that TDCPP disturbed the development of early mouse embryos in a dose-dependent manner. 10 muM TDCPP decreased the blastocyst formation and 100 muM TDCPP was a lethal concentration for the mouse embryos. We proved that TDCPP was detrimental to embryonic development potential by increasing the reactive oxygen species level and inducing early apoptosis. Furthermore, TDCPP changed the DNA methylation patterns of imprinted genes in treated blastocysts. The methylation of H19 and Snrpn promoter regions was increased from 37.67% to 46.00% and 31.56% to 44.38% in treated groups, respectively. In contrast, Peg3 promoter region methylation was declined from 86.55% to 73.27% in treated embryos. Taken together, our results demonstrated that TDCPP could adversely impair the early embryonic development in mouse. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 2019. (c) 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.