As a highly sensitive vibrational technique, Raman spectroscopy (RS) can provide valuable chemical and molecular data useful to characterise animal cell types, tissues and organs. As a label-free, rapid detection method, RS has been considered a valuable asset in forensics, biology and medicine. The technique has been applied to zebrafish for various purposes, including physiological, biochemical or bioaccumulation analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe tadpole shrimp is a freshwater crustacean with fast embryonic and larval development, short life cycle, and high fecundity. They are very active swimmers of a reasonable size, easy to spot and record. Such characteristics make it a promising candidate as an experimental model in ecotoxicology to evaluate the effects of aquatic pollutants, particularly using its locomotor behavior as an endpoint.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiosens Bioelectron
February 2022
Freshwater quality has been changing due to the ever greater use of water resources and the contamination load resulting from human activities. Management of these systems, thus, requires constant diagnose of water quality with fast and efficient methodologies. The conventional methods adopted are, however, time-consuming, often very expensive, and require specialised expertise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContamination by microplastics is increasing steadily worldwide, affecting all environments. Additionally, aquatic organisms are often exposed to mixtures of other contaminants, including various chemicals. Numerous studies reported adsorption of chemicals to microplastics, raising concern about their possible role as vehicles of exposure through transfer to biota.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiatom species are good pollution bioindicators due to their large distribution, fast response to changes in environmental parameters and different tolerance ranges. These organisms are used in ecological water assessment all over the world using autoecological indices. Such assessments commonly rely on the taxonomic identification of diatom species-specific shape and frustule ornaments, from which cell counts, species richness and diversity indices can be estimated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe data presented herein relates to the article entitled "Norfluoxetine and venlafaxine in zebrafish larvae: single and combined toxicity of two pharmaceutical products relevant for risk assessment" [1]. Recent studies have shown the occurrence of active metabolites of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals in surface and wastewaters. Besides their biological activity, some are predicted to interact with the same molecular targets of their parental compounds, thus showing the potential to elicit detrimental effects on animals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArtemia cysts have a huge economic importance for the aquaculture sector due to the fact that they are used as live feed for larviculture. Microplastics (MPs) are common and emergent pollutants in the aquatic environments, with unknown and potential long-term effects on planktonic species such as Artemia spp. When used as live feed, Artemia could transfer contaminants to fish along the food chain, with possible adverse effects on human health through their consumption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLymnaea stagnalis, also referred to as great or common pond snail, is an abundant and widespread invertebrate species colonizing temperate limnic systems. Given the species importance, studies involving L. stagnalis have the potential to produce scientifically relevant information, leading to a better understanding of the damage caused by aquatic contamination, as well as the modes of action of toxicants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe data presented herein relates to the article entitled "Multibiomarker interactions to diagnose and follow-up chronic exposure of a marine crustacean to hazardous and noxious substances (HNS)" (Abreu et al., 2018). Multibiomarker approaches, including molecular, biochemical, physiological and behaviour parameters, are recognised as valuable and cost-effective to employ in integrated chemical and biological effects monitoring of aquatic contamination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntegrated compensatory responses of physiological systems towards homeostasis are generally overlooked when it comes to analysing alterations in biochemical parameters indicative of such processes. Here an hypothesis-driven multivariate analysis accounting for interactive multibiomarker responses was used to investigate effects of long-term exposure of Carcinus maenas to Hazardous and Noxious Substances (HNS). Adult male crabs were exposed to low and high post-spill levels of acrylonitrile (ACN) or aniline (ANL) for 21d.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Total Environ
September 2018
Traditional physico-chemical sensors are becoming an obsolete tool for environmental quality assessment. Biomonitoring techniques, such as biological early warning systems present the advantage of being sensitivity, fast, non-invasive and ecologically relevant. In this work, we applied a video tracking system, developed with zebrafish (Danio rerio), to detect microbiological contamination in water.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigated the in vivo effects of microcystins on gene expression of several phosphoprotein phosphatases (PPP) in the freshwater clam Corbicula fluminea with two different exposure scenarios. Clams were exposed for 96 h to 5 μg L(-1) of dissolved microcystin-LR and the relative changes of gene expression of three different types of PPP (PPP1, 2 and 4) were analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR. The results showed a significant induction of PPP2 gene expression in the visceral mass.
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