Remote in vivo stress assessment of aquatic animals with microencapsulated biomarkers for environmental monitoring

Abstract

Remote in vivo scanning of physiological parameters is a major trend in the development of new tools for the fields of medicine and animal physiology. For this purpose, a variety of implantable optical micro- and nanosensors have been designed for potential medical applications. At the same time, the important area of environmental sciences has been neglected in the development of techniques for remote physiological measurements. In the field of environmental monitoring and related research, there is a constant demand for new effective and quick techniques for the stress assessment of aquatic animals, and the development of proper methods for remote physiological measurements in vivo may significantly increase the precision and throughput of analyses in this field. In the present study, we apply pH-sensitive microencapsulated biomarkers to remotely monitor the pH of haemolymph in vivo in endemic amphipods from Lake Baikal, and we compare the suitability of this technique for stress assessment with that of common biochemical methods. For the first time, we demonstrate the possibility of remotely detecting a change in a physiological parameter in an aquatic organism under ecologically relevant stressful conditions and show the applicability of techniques using microencapsulated biomarkers for remote physiological measurements in environmental monitoring.

Distribution of PEG-coated hollow polyelectrolyte microcapsules after introduction into the circulatory system and muscles of zebrafish

“…(1) Delivery of drugs and vaccines to target organs/tissues; this requires some technological solutions for control of the wall opening of capsules ( De Geest et al, 2007 , 2012 ; Esser-Kahn et al, 2011 ; Skirtach et al, 2011 ; Dierendonck et al, 2012 ; Feng et al, 2014 ; Gao et al, 2016 ). (2) Sensing of physiological parameters in vivo ( Ruckh and Clark, 2014 ; Cui et al, 2014 ; Gurkov et al, 2016 ; Borvinskaya et al, 2017 ). This employment is based on the properties of semipermeability and stability (at least on certain time scales) of some types of polymeric shells.…”

CrusTF: a comprehensive resource of transcriptomes for evolutionary and functional studies of crustacean transcription factors

“…Two major orders are Decapoda and Amphipoda, which have 68 and 70 species in our collection, respectively. The former is the order containing many economic crustacean species, like crabs, lobsters, crayfishes, and shrimps ( http://www.fao.org/fishery/collection/asfis/en ), while the latter contains many species for environmental monitoring [ 32 ]. Even though other orders only have 1 to 5 species, they are usually the most representative species in those orders.…”

Application of PEG-Covered Non-Biodegradable Polyelectrolyte Microcapsules in the Crustacean Circulatory System on the Example of the Amphipod Eulimnogammarus verrucosus

“…Fluorescent microscopy was performed in either the green channel (the peak excitation wavelength at 496 nm; long-pass emission filter from ~510 nm) or the red channel (the peak excitation wavelength at 546 nm; long-pass emission filter from ~585 nm). The parameters of the green channel were standard for visualization of FITC and similar dyes; the illumination conditions of the red channel were optimized to excite SNARF-1 in the used optical system [16,21]. Data analysis was performed using the Scilab package ().…”

“…However, possibilities for the application of microcapsules as an implantable tool for monitoring and adjusting the physiological status of crustaceans in vivo remain poorly explored. Previously, we applied the PEG-covered polyelectrolyte microcapsules to deliver the pH-sensitive fluorescent dye SNARF-1 into the main hemolymph vessel of the amphipod Eulimnogammarus verrucosus (Figure 1) and monitor pH changes in vivo [16]. The same approach is perspective for measuring other parameters, such as the concentration of different ions and metabolites [17], directly in the circulatory system of various crustaceans with translucent exoskeletons.…”