Glaviano F et al. (2023), Morphologic and genic effects of waste pollutio...

ECB-ART-51375

Front Physiol 2023 Jan 01;14:1161852. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1161852.

Show Gene links Show Anatomy links

Morphologic and genic effects of waste pollution on the reproductive physiology of Paracentrotus lividus lmk: a mesocosm experiment.

Glaviano F , Federico S , Pinto B , Gharbi M , Russo T , Cosmo AD , Polese G , Costantini M , Zupo V .

???displayArticle.abstract???
A considerable amount of coastal contamination is caused by wastes deriving from household and the degradation and the metabolism of plants and animals, even if our attention is commonly focused on industrial pollutants and contaminants. Waste pollutants are mainly represented by highly diluted soluble compounds and particles deriving from dead organisms. This complex combination, consisting of suspended particles and dissolved nutrients, has a significant impact on coastal planktonic and benthic organisms, also playing an active role in the global cycles of carbon. In addition, production practices are nowadays shifting towards recirculated aquaculture systems (RAS) and the genic responses of target organisms to the pollution deriving from animal metabolism are still scarcely addressed by scientific investigations. The reservoir of organic matter dissolved in the seawater is by far the least understood if compared to that on land, cause only a few compounds have been identified and their impacts on animals and plants are poorly understood. The tendency of these compounds to concentrate at interfaces facilitates the absorption of dissolved organic compound (DOC) onto suspended particles. Some DOC components are chemically combined with dissolved metals and form complexes, affecting the chemical properties of the seawater and the life of the coastal biota. In this research, we compared the reproductive performances of the common sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus cultured in open-cycle tanks to those cultured in a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS), where pollution progressively increased during the experiment due to animal escretions. Sea urchins were cultured for 7 months under these two conditions and their gametes were collected. Embryos resulting by in vitro fertilization were analyzed by Real Time qPCR to identify possible effects of pollution-induced stress. The fertility of sea urchins was evaluated, as well as the gonadosomatic indices and the histological features of gonads. Our results indicate that pollution due to excess of nutrients, event at sub-lethal concentrations, may hardly impact the reproductive potential of this key species and that chronic effects of stress are revealed by the analyses of survival rates and gene expression.

???displayArticle.pubmedLink??? 37288438
???displayArticle.pmcLink??? PMC10242131
???displayArticle.link??? Front Physiol

???attribute.lit??? ???displayArticles.show???

References [+] :

Asher, Chiral source apportionment of polychlorinated biphenyls to the Hudson River estuary atmosphere and food web. 2007, Pubmed

	FIGURE 1. Chemical and physical water trends in RAS tanks and control (Ctrl) tanks. (A) Temperature; (B) Salinity; (C) Nitrite (NO2); (D) Nitrate (NO3); (E) Ammonia (NH4); (F) Phosphate (PO4); (G) dissolved oxygen; (H) pH.
	FIGURE 2. Mortality rates of animals reared in the RAS tanks and control tanks.
	FIGURE 3. Correlation matrix for different measures from RAS tank 1 (A). Correlation matrix for different measures from RAS tank 2 (B).
	FIGURE 4. Percentage of malformed and delayed embryos at 48 h post-fertilization from sea urchins reared in RAS tanks and Open System.
	FIGURE 5. Gonadosomatic indices recorded at the end of the experimental period from sea urchins reared in RAS tanks and control tanks.
	FIGURE 6. Overview of gonads sections from specimens raised with different water circuitry. (A–C), testicles; (D–I) ovary sections; CTL, control system; (*lipofuscin aggregate, a atrasia, n necrosis) scale bar = 100 µm.
	FIGURE 7. Ih: the graph shows the comparison of Ih among difference treatments, C = control tanks, V1 and V2 = RAS.
	FIGURE 8. Heatmaps showing the expression profiles and hierarchical clustering of genes analysed by real-time qPCR in embryos deriving from P. lividus sea urchins reared in RAS tank 1 (on the left) and RAS tank 2 (on the right). (A) key genes involved in the stress response are shown; (B) key genes involved in skeletogenesis and detoxification pathways are shown; (C) key genes involved in development/differentiation are shown. A-B-C-D-E in the columns are the different replicates coming from different females. Colour code: red, upregulated genes with respect to the control; green, downregulated genes.