Caging of planktonic rotifers in microfluidic environment for sub-lethal aquatic toxicity tests

Abstract

Quantification of neuro-behavioural responses of intact small model organisms has been proposed as a sensitive, sub-lethal alternative to conventional toxicity testing. Such bioassays are characterized by a high physiological and ecological relevance, short response times, increased sensitivity, and non-invasive nature. Despite a significant potential for predictive aquatic toxicology analysis of behavioural traits of micro-invertebrates in microfluidic environment has received little attention. In this work, we demonstrate a new Lab-on-a-Chip technology capable of effectively caging freshwater rotifers for real-time video-microscopy analysis. We demonstrate that behavioural bioassays performed under microfluidic perfusion can significantly enhance the sensitivity of conventional ecotoxicology test protocols.

Daphnia as a model organism to probe biological responses to nanomaterials—from individual to population effects via adverse outcome pathways

“…Such devices can detect growth, cell viability, bioluminescence, movement, and electrochemical changes to understand the mechanisms of toxicity for those model organisms Zhang et al, 2017;Altintas et al, 2018). For multicellular organisms, some ecotoxicity studies were reported, for example, with: rotifers (Brachionus calyciflorus) (Cartlidge and Wlodkowic, 2018), Crustacea (Artemia sp.) (Huang et al, 2015), Allorchestes copressa (Cartlidge et al, 2017) and Daphnia magna (Huang et al, 2017;Tabatabaei Anaraki et al, 2018), nematode (Caenorhabditis elegans) Zhang et al, 2021;Aubry et al, 2022) and fish (Danio rerio) models (Yang et al, 2016;Khalili and Rezai, 2019).…”