IBR   13079
INSTITUTO DE BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR Y CELULAR DE ROSARIO
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Determination of toxicity and ecotoxicity of chemicals, pesticides and biocides using zebrafish embryos.
Autor/es:
BICHARA, D.; ARRANZ, S.E.; CALCATERRA, N.B.; ARMAS, P.
Lugar:
Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina.
Reunión:
Workshop; 1st Argentinean Workshop in Environmental Science.; 2009
Institución organizadora:
Fac. Cs. Bioq. y Farm. - U.N.R.
Resumen:
The introduction of chemicals into the environment by human
activities represents a serious risk to environmental and human health.
Therefore, information about the toxicity of chemicals, pesticides,
biocides and pharmaceutical drugs is required. Common eco-toxicity
tests make use of adult fish specimens to evaluate aquatic toxicity.
However, there is an increasing ethical demand for the replacement of
animal tests. One convenient choice is the use of the fish embryo
toxicity assay, which has been demonstrated to correlate with acute
fish assays. This test is performed
with non-hatched embryos of the zebrafish Danio rerio, allowing
to determine the toxicity of a substance or liquid sample by using
24-well multiplates. We have optimized our zebrafish facility for the
test conditions and evaluated several reference drugs in order to
contrast our results with results from other laboratories. Moreover we
designed a variant test using a single 96-well multiplate to perform
the complete assay, that allow to rapidly obtain the LC50
for a drug or liquid sample in short times and using low volumes. The
test was performed using commercial formulations of the broad-spectrum
systemic herbicide glyphosate (N-phosphonomethyl glycine) and the
insecticide cypermethrin (cis and trans mixture of
cyano-3-phenoxybenzyl-2,2-dimethylcyclopropanecarboxylate). Results
from these assays indicate LC50 values that are 1000-fold
(in the case of glyphosate) and 2-fold (in the case of cypermethrin)
lower than the concentrations used in Soya farming lands. In addition,
taking advantage of the zebrafish as an excellent model organism for
the study of physiological function, here we present the design and construction of the
molecular tools for the generation of a transgenic fish line that will result useful to detect liver cellular
damage in vivo by using bimolecular fluorescence complementation
strategy.