Sodium sulfite is a potential hypoxia inducer that mimics hypoxic stress in Caenorhabditis elegans

Physical and chemical hypoxia have been widely used in the study of hypoxic injury; however, both of these hypoxia models have their own limitations. Physical hypoxia is usually difficult to control and maintain. Chemical hypoxia, which is usually induced by chemical hypoxia-mimicking agents, such as CoCl2, may result in heavy metal toxicity or impose security threats. To develop a more suitable hypoxia model, we focused on sodium sulfite (Na2SO3) and evaluated its ability to remove dissolved oxygen in aqueous solutions. Our results showed that sodium sulfite successfully induced hypoxic conditions. The degree of hypoxia and the guarantee period of the sodium sulfite solution could be easily controlled by the concentration of soluble sodium sulfite. In addition, we used sodium sulfite to create a hypoxia model in Caenorhabditis elegans. Similar to physical hypoxia, the sodium sulfite solutions induced hypoxia-related death in the worms and led to morphologic cell defects and C. elegans hypoxia inducible factor 1 stabilization. Taken together, our data show that sodium sulfite is a potential hypoxia inducer that mimics hypoxic stress in C. elegans.