Monitoring the Effects of Chiral Pharmaceuticals on Aquatic Microorganisms by Metabolic Fingerprinting

Abstract

The effects of the chiral pharmaceuticals atenolol and propranolol on Pseudomonas putida, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Micrococcus luteus, and Blastomonas natatoria were investigated. The growth dynamics of exposed cultures were monitored using a Bioscreen instrument. In addition, Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy with appropriate chemometrics and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were employed in order to investigate the phenotypic changes and possible degradation of the drugs in exposed cultures. For the majority of the bacteria studied there was not a statistically significant difference in the organism's phenotype when it was exposed to the different enantiomers or mixtures of enantiomers. In contrast, the pseudomonads appeared to respond differently to propranolol, and the two enantiomers had different effects on the cellular phenotype. This implies that there were different metabolic responses in the organisms when they were exposed to the different enantiomers. We suggest that our findings may indicate that there are widespread effects on aquatic communities in which active pharmaceutical ingredients are present.Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and their metabolites are ubiquitous in the environment (12), and the occurrence of APIs in the aquatic environment is a growing concern (13). There are a number of routes by which APIs and their metabolites and degradation products may enter these ecosystems, and a common avenue is through excretion of the APIs and their metabolites in urine and feces. It is known that APIs have different rates of metabolism in humans. For example, the ␤-blocker propranolol is almost completely metabolized in the liver, and only 1 to 4% of an oral dose is excreted as the unchanged API and its metabolites. In contrast, 40 to 50% of an oral dose of atenolol (also a ␤-blocker) is excreted as the API or its metabolites (2, 6, 7). Subsequent degradation of the APIs and their metabolites may also occur at sewage treatment plants (STPs

Evidence for Phenotypic Plasticity among Multihost Campylobacter jejuni and C. coli Lineages, Obtained Using Ribosomal Multilocus Sequence Typing and Raman Spectroscopy

“…Raman spectroscopy has previously been shown to be highly sensitive to phenotypic changes in cellular content, although most previous studies have focused on phenotypic changes due to metabolic history, such as growth stage (51) or exposure to stress in the form of chemicals, such as pharmaceuticals (52) and antibiotics (53). The link between phenotype and genotype may not always be clear, as there is likely to be "noise" caused by differences in gene expression between different isolates.…”

Application of Mid-infrared and Raman Spectroscopy to the Study of Bacteria

“…The DPA content in spores is closely related to its resistance to PATP. FT-IR spectroscopy and microspectroscopy were also used to study the inactivation effect of pharmaceuticals to ubiquitous environmental aquatic microorganisms, through which the potential ecological risk could be validated (Patel et al 2008b;Wharfe et al 2010).…”

Chemical fixation methods for Raman spectroscopy-based analysis of bacteria

“…This approach has previously been used to identify and discriminate between species and strains of fungi (De Gussem et al, 2007), algae , viruses (Driskell et al, 2010) and most frequently bacteria (Palchaudhuri et al, 2011, Read et al, 2013. As well as a rapid identification tool, Raman has been used to examine the phenotypic and physiological changes that occur with exposure to stressors in the form of pollutants such as ionic metals (Walter et al, 2012), metal nanoparticles (Cherchi et al, 2011), organic pollutants (Daniel et al, 2008, Singer et al, 2005, antibiotics (Escoriza et al, 2007), and pharmaceuticals (Wharfe et al, 2010). Raman has also been used to measure the concentration and spatial distribution of cellular metabolites such as algal lipids (Wu et al, 2011) and pigments such as carotenoids (Tao et al, 2011) and chlorophyll (Huang, Beal, Cai, Ruoff and Terentjev, 2010).…”