Preliminary analysis of species sensitivity distribution based on gene expression effect

Abstract

Species sensitivity analysis is one of the major techniques applied to derive water quality criteria. Presently, the toxicity data used for development of water quality criteria are mainly in the biological individual level. With the increase of ecotoxicogenomics toxicity data, it is worth studying whether the gene expression effect data can be used to derive water quality criteria. Taking cadmium, copper and zinc as examples, we analyzed the toxic effects of the three heavy metals by constructing the species sensitivity distribution curves on the basis of extensive toxicity data. The results showed that the rank of species sensitivity for the acute, chronic and gene expression effect toxicity data of cadmium is “chronic>gene>acute”. Although the gene expression effect data of copper and zinc are insufficient, the trend of data sensitivity of zinc is similar to cadmium. However, the trend of species sensitivity of copper is different from that of cadmium and zinc with higher sensitivity of gene expression data. It suggested that though the existing data of gene expression effects are not sufficient enough, they have the potential to be used in the development of chronic water quality criteria. For application in the derivation of water quality criteria, illogical test concentration design and insufficient target genes are two main weaknesses in the study of gene expression effects.