Induction of Metallothionein by Roxarsone in Earthworm Eisenia Andrei

Metallothionein (MT) is one kind of proteins induced in organism under the stress of heavy metal. It plays a great pole in detoxification and tolerance of heavy metal. In this study, according to the rich conservative sequence in MT, we designed corresponding primer, then cloned MT mRNA gene induced by As in earthworm E. andrei and got its nucleotide sequence. The results proved the presence of MT in Eisenia andrei, and showed that roxarsone could induce the expression of arsenic MT gene.