Abstract
The Una River and its basin constitute an important water source for public supply in the municipality of Taubaté (SP, Brazil). The present work aimed to investigate biochemical markers of environmental pollution in the Una river basin using enzymes extracted from the kidneys, gills and brains of Astyanax bimaculatus, a fish commonly found in this basin. Tissue levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), malate dehydrogenase (MDH), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) were determined in tissues of A. bimaculatus collected in water bodies localized at Fazenda Piloto of the University of Taubaté (P1), the Remédios municipal road (P2) and at a small lake near the neighborhood of Ipiranga (P3), all located in the municipality of Taubaté. The lowest activities of renal and gill SOD were found in fish collected from P2 and P3, respectively. Renal and branchial CAT, renal MDH and LDH, as well as the activity of cerebral LDH were not affected by collection site. The activities of brain MDH and AChE were higher in fish from P3 in comparison with P1. These results along with earlier published findings, indicate that the hepatic SOD and CAT, gill SOD and LDH, muscle MDH and brain MDH and AChE are sensitive to contamination in the environment and hence can be considered as good candidate biomarkers of environmental change in the Una River basin.
Highlights
Detection of environmental pollution is important because by the time the alteration in the environment is evident, it may be too late to take corrective action, or it may be economically infeasible
Used biochemical markers are antioxidative enzymes such as catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD), enzymes that are related to energy metabolism such as lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH) and enzymes related to neurotransmission such as acetylcholinesterase (AChE) (Kumar et al, 2017)
The physicochemical analysis of the water of sites P1, P2 and P3 at the time of fish capture has already been published, as well as the map with the location of these sites (Batista et al, 2014, Ribeiro et al, 2015). These data from the physicochemical analyses indicated that: (1) the less impacted site was P1, its total phosphate level (0.3 mg L-1) was slightly elevated in relation to reference values (0.1 mg L-1); (2) the conductivity of the P2 aquatic environment (198.7 S cm-1) was 1.9 times higher than in P1, and 1.6 times higher than in P3, showing that P2 fish were exposed to high levels of electrolytes from an impacted environment (CETESB, 2009); (3) P3 presented the highest values of chemical oxygen demand (COD), indicating abundance of organic matter in the water
Summary
Detection of environmental pollution is important because by the time the alteration in the environment is evident, it may be too late to take corrective action, or it may be economically infeasible. Biomarkers could be used for early detection of sublethal levels of pollutants. Since fish live their entire life cycle in water, their cellular enzymes are considered good biomarkers for monitoring water quality. Used biochemical markers are antioxidative enzymes such as catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD), enzymes that are related to energy metabolism such as lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH) and enzymes related to neurotransmission such as acetylcholinesterase (AChE) (Kumar et al, 2017). LDH catalyzes the reversible reaction between pyruvate and lactate coupled with oxidation-reduction of NADH-NAD+ and is considered an indicator of anaerobic capacity of the cell. MDH catalyzes the reversible oxidation of malate into oxaloacetate, using NAD as a co-factor. AChE has been used as a specific biomarker for pesticides, and cerebral AChE of the fish Poecila reticulate showed dose-dependent inhibition by chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide (Deb and Das, 2013)
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