{"title":"Microbial bioassays in environmental toxicity testing.","authors":"Cristina A Viegas","doi":"10.1016/bs.aambs.2021.03.002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Accidental spills and the misuse of chemicals may lead to current and legacy environmental contamination and pose concerns over possible (eco)toxicological secondary effects and risks toward non-target microbes and higher eukaryotes, including humans, in ecosystems. In the last decades, scientists and regulators have faced requests to thoroughly screen, prioritize and predict the possible deleterious effects of the huge numbers of existing and emerging xenobiotics, wastewaters and environmental samples on biological systems. In this context, it has become necessary to develop and validate (eco)toxicity bioassays based on microorganisms (e.g., bacteria, microalga, yeast, filamentous fungi, protozoa) as test-organisms whose data should be meaningful for environmental (micro)organisms that may be exposed to contaminated environments. These generally simple, fast and cost-effective bioassays may be preliminary and complementary to the more complex and long-term whole-organism animal-based traditional ecotoxicity tests. With the goal of highlighting the potential offered by microbial-based bioassays as non-animal alternatives in (eco)toxicity testing, the present chapter provides an overview of the current state-of-the art in the development and use of microbial toxicity bioassays through the examination of relatively recent examples with a diverse range of toxicity endpoints. It goes into the (eco)toxicological relevance of these bioassays, ranging from the more traditional microalga- and bacterial-based assays already accepted at regulatory level and commercially available to the more innovative microbial transcriptional profiling and gene expression bioassays, including some examples of biosensors.</p>","PeriodicalId":7298,"journal":{"name":"Advances in applied microbiology","volume":"115 ","pages":"115-158"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/bs.aambs.2021.03.002","citationCount":"8","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Advances in applied microbiology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aambs.2021.03.002","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2021/4/20 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Immunology and Microbiology","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 8
Abstract
Accidental spills and the misuse of chemicals may lead to current and legacy environmental contamination and pose concerns over possible (eco)toxicological secondary effects and risks toward non-target microbes and higher eukaryotes, including humans, in ecosystems. In the last decades, scientists and regulators have faced requests to thoroughly screen, prioritize and predict the possible deleterious effects of the huge numbers of existing and emerging xenobiotics, wastewaters and environmental samples on biological systems. In this context, it has become necessary to develop and validate (eco)toxicity bioassays based on microorganisms (e.g., bacteria, microalga, yeast, filamentous fungi, protozoa) as test-organisms whose data should be meaningful for environmental (micro)organisms that may be exposed to contaminated environments. These generally simple, fast and cost-effective bioassays may be preliminary and complementary to the more complex and long-term whole-organism animal-based traditional ecotoxicity tests. With the goal of highlighting the potential offered by microbial-based bioassays as non-animal alternatives in (eco)toxicity testing, the present chapter provides an overview of the current state-of-the art in the development and use of microbial toxicity bioassays through the examination of relatively recent examples with a diverse range of toxicity endpoints. It goes into the (eco)toxicological relevance of these bioassays, ranging from the more traditional microalga- and bacterial-based assays already accepted at regulatory level and commercially available to the more innovative microbial transcriptional profiling and gene expression bioassays, including some examples of biosensors.
期刊介绍:
Advances in Applied Microbiology offers intensive reviews of the latest techniques and discoveries in this rapidly moving field. The editors are recognized experts and the format is comprehensive and instructive.
Published since 1959, Advances in Applied Microbiology continues to be one of the most widely read and authoritative review sources in microbiology.
Recent areas covered include bacterial diversity in the human gut, protozoan grazing of freshwater biofilms, metals in yeast fermentation processes and the interpretation of host-pathogen dialogue through microarrays.