BIOSCIENCES BIOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH ASIA, March 2018. Vol. 15(1), p. 39-49 *Corresponding author E-mail: mashraf38@gmail.com Published by Oriental Scientific Publishing Company © 2018 This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted Non Commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Assessment of DNA Damage During Gene Delivery in Freshwater Prawn by Chitosan Reduced Gold Nanoparticles Priyanka C. Nandanpawar 1 , Mohd Ashraf Rather 2 *, Mohan Ramesh Badhe 1 and Rupam Sharma 1 1 Division of Fish Genetics and Biotechnology, Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Panch Marg, Versova, Mumbai – 400061, India. 2 College of Fisheries shirgaon, Ratnagiri- India. http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/2606 (Received: 16 February 2018; accepted: 20 March 2018) The increasing application of nanoparticles both in industries and in agricultural fields has led to its accumulation in the aquatic ecosystem through water run-off. Insights into the validity of safer nanoparticles such as gold and chitosan are fairly established. However, its effect on aquatic invertebrates has been less studied. The present study was aimed to study effects of chitosan reduced gold nanoparticles (CRGNPs) during green fluorescent protein (GFP) encoding plasmid delivery in giant freshwater prawn, macrobrachium rosenbergii. The mean particle size and zeta potential CRGNPs was 33.7 nm and 24.79 mV respectively. Prawn juveniles were exposed to nanoparticles concentrations (10 µg/L, 20 µg/L) of CRGNPs by immersion treatment for a period of 36 hours. GFP was ubiquitously expressed in muscle tissues of prawns. The comet assay indicated dose dependent genotoxicity of CRGNPs in gill, pleopod and muscle tissues which was in conformity with its bioaccumulation pattern in vivo. The highest bioaccumulation of CRGNPs was found in Gills, followed by pleopods and least in muscles. Hence, the toxicological potential of CRGNPs to the environment cannot be denied and demands more research on the particular aspect. The doses standardized in the present study would be helpful in safer nano-gene delivery in aquatic invertebrates and development of transgenics employing less cost. Keywords: Gold Nanoparticles; GFP, Genotoxicity; Bioaccumulation, Comet assay. In this era of modern biomedical sciences, nanoparticles are being extensively used for applications such as delivery of genes, hormones, vaccines, peptides or proteins intended for therapeutic purpose. Moreover, cell labeling (Bhirde et al., 2011), drug targeting ( Hans and Lowman 2002), biosensors, and hyperthermia therapy are only a portion of the wide nanoparticle application spectrum (Jeng and Swanson .,2006). Various metal and polymeric nanoparticles (1-100 Nanometers) like gold, Titanium oxide (Ghosh et al. 2008; Rather et al., 2013)) and Chitosan (Rather et al .,2016; Duceppe and Tabrizian 2010)) ( Kashyap et al .,2015)), poly Lactic- co-Glycolic Acid (PLGA)(Li Y-P et al., 2001), polyLactic Acid (PLA)( Kumari et al .,2010), poly-å-caprolactone (PCL)(Tang et al., 2014)) and gelatin etc.are used for the above purposes.( Soppimath et al., 2001; Mahapatro A and Singh DK . 2011). These nanoparticles are being used mainly because of their unique properties such as electrostatic binding, higher intracellular uptake, convenient release profiles and better encapsulation efficiency (Shan et al.,2012). In