Use of zebrafish embryos for the implementation of toxicity tests.

BICHARA, D.; ARRANZ, S.E.; CALCATERRA, N.B.; ARMAS, P.

San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina.

Congreso; XLV Annual Meeting of the Argentine Society for Biochemestry and Molecular Biology Research.; 2009

Argentine Society for Biochemestry and Molecular Biology Research.

Environmental contamination with chemicals represents a serious risk to ecological and human health. Information about the toxicity of chemicals, pesticides, biocides and pharmaceutical drugs is required. Common eco-toxicity tests that make use of adult fish specimens have increasing ethical objection and demand to be replaced. One choice is the “fish embryo toxicity assay” that correlates other common eco-toxicity assay. This test is performed with non-hatched embryos of the zebrafish Danio rerio and allows to determine toxicity by using 24-well multiplates. We have optimized our zebrafish facility for the test conditions and designed a variant test using a single 96-well multiplate to perform the complete assay, that allows to rapidly obtain the LC50 for a drug or liquid sample using low volumes. We assayed commercial formulations of the broad-spectrum herbicide glyphosate and the insecticide cypermethrin obtaining LC50 values that are, respectively, 1000-fold and 2-fold lower than the concentrations used in farming lands. Additionally, taking advantage of the zebrafish as an excellent organism for the study of physiological function, here we present the design and construction of molecular tools for the generation of transgenic fish lines that will result useful to detect liver cellular damage in vivo by using bimolecular fluorescence complementation strategy.