Comparison of organics and heavy metals acute toxicities to Vibrio fischeri

Abstract

Vibrio fischeri bioluminescence inhibition has been widely used to test acute toxicities of metals and organics contaminants. However, the differences of metals and organics acute toxicities to V. fischeri have not been compared. Here, four heavy metals (Zn2+, Cu2+, Cd2+, Cr6+) and five organics (phenol, benzoic acid, p-hydroxy benzoic acid, nitro-benzene and benzene) acute toxicities to V. fischeri were investigated. Heavy metals toxicities to V. fischeri were increased along with the reaction time, while the organics toxicities kept the same level in different reaction times. In order to explain the difference, the relative cell death rate of V. fischeri was detected. In metals toxicities tests, the bioluminescence inhibition rate of V. fischeri was found to be significantly higher than the relative cell death rate (P<0.05), while for the organics toxicities tests, the cell death rate was similar to the bioluminescence inhibition rate. These results indicated that organics acute toxicities to V. fischeri could reflect the death of cell, but metals acute toxicities to V. fischeri may not lead to the death of cell, just represent the bioluminescence inhibition.

Assessment of water quality from the Blue Lagoon of El Cobre mine in Santiago de Cuba: a preliminary study for water reuse

“…These results are in agreement with those reported by Yang et al (2016), who investigated the acute toxicity of four heavy metals (Zn, Cu, Cd and Cr) using V. fischeri: they also showed that heavy metal toxicity to V. fischeri increased along with the reaction time. Utgikar et al (2004) studied the toxic effects of zinc and copper separately and in binary solution, and they observed qualitative and quantitative differences in the nature of the response, indicating possible different toxicity/inhibition mechanisms for zinc and copper as well as an enhancement of the toxic effect when both elements were in solution.…”

Mathematical Modeling Approaches for Assessing the Joint Toxicity of Chemical Mixtures Based on Luminescent Bacteria: A Systematic Review

“…Most of the microbial biosensors based on luminescent bacteria could be classified as this specific group (Belkin, 2003 ). Nowadays, biosensors are rapidly developing toward higher sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility, automation and high throughput (Conforti et al, 2008 ; Skotti et al, 2014 ; Yang et al, 2016 ). Furthermore, some specific biosensors with recombinant bioluminescent bacteria have also been designed to detect cell damage, like DNA damage, protein damage, cell membrane damage and stress response (Ahn et al, 2009 ; Sazykin et al, 2016 ; Jiang et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Inevitably, the application of multicellular organisms exhibits the undesirable limitations of relatively longer operation time and higher cost. Therefore, microbial bioassays, especially with luminescent bacteria increased widely interests in the acute toxicity bioassays due to its operational simplicity, less time and cost consuming, higher sensitivity, specificity, and reproducibility (Conforti et al, 2008 ; Skotti et al, 2014 ; Yang et al, 2016 ).…”

Comparison of Joint Effect of Acute and Chronic Toxicity for Combined Assessment of Heavy Metals on Photobacterium sp.NAA-MIE

“…Unfortunately, the analysis of the total amount of heavy metals is unable to represent the full environmental behaviors and ecological effects of heavy metals [ 11 ]. Numerous studies deal with risk effects of single metal types, while in reality the aquatic organisms are often exposed to mixtures of metals [ 12 , 13 ].…”

“…At the moment, bioluminescence inhibition assay has been widely used to test acute toxicities of metals. Based on previous studies, Vibrio fischeri bioluminescence inhibition bioassay (VFBIA) only provides information about the overall acute metal toxicity [ 11 , 17 , 19 ]. Direct assessment of the potential chronic effects of metals by applying naturally bioluminescence species is currently lacking.…”