Toxic effects of dechlorane plus on the common carp (Cyprinus carpio) embryonic development

Abstract

Dechlorane Plus (DP) is a widely using chlorinated flame retardant, and has been detected extensively in the environment. Even though the DP content in the surface water is low, it can pose a continuous exposure risk to aquatic organisms due to its strong bioaccumulation. Since related researches on the toxicity mechanism of DP exposure on carp embryo development are limited, we carried out the evaluation of DP effect on carp. In this study, Carp embryos were exposed to DP of 0, 30, 60, and 120 µg/L at 3h post fertilization (hpf). The expression of genes associated with the neural and skeletal development such as sox2, sox19a, Mef2c, and BMP4 were evaluated using quantitative PCR (qPCR), and analysis of different developmental toxicity endpoints changes were observed with microscopy. Our results demonstrated that the expression of sox2, sox19a, Mef2c, and BMP4 were significantly changed and several developmental defects were observed in the exposed carps embryo, such as DNA damage, increased mortality rate, delayed hatching time, decreased hatching rate, decreased body length, increased morphological deformities. In addition, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malondialdehyde (MDA) were significantly increased with DP exposure at 60µg/L and 120 µg/L. Altogether, our results suggest that DP may have an unique modes of action, which results in aberration occurrence in the early development stage of common carps, that may relates to some gene damage and oxidative stress. Besides, the parameters evaluated here can be used as tools to access the environmental risk for biota and humans exposed to DP.

The developing zebrafish kidney is impaired by Deepwater Horizon crude oil early-life stage exposure: A molecular to whole-organism perspective

“…This evidence further suggests the significant implications of crude oil exposure related to the cardiovascular system in teleost fish; however, it is unclear why no differences associated with MMP transcript expression were observed during the 96 h exposure. Nevertheless, potential cardiotoxic effects at the molecular level might be associated with the concentration-response increase in expression of bmp4 mRNA during the crude oil exposure (Figure 4), as previous studies have associated altered expression of this transcript with developmental cardiac defects (Li et al 2020) and cardiotoxicity (Huang et al 2018).…”