Purification and characterization of a copper-binding protein from Asian periwinkle Littorina brevicula

Potential implementation of trees to remediate contaminated soil in Egypt

Soil and water in Egypt have become contaminated with multiple pollutants. These contaminants arise from diverse sources, including misuse of fertilizers, industrial effluent discharged into irrigation water, discharge of wastewater in rural areas, and mining activities discharging wet and dry atmospheric deposits and heavy metal contamination. The pollutants can directly affect the quality of air, water, and food and have an adverse effect on human health. About 33% of the cultivated lands in Egypt are salinized due to extreme conditions like high temperatures and aridity. The presence of elevated salt levels in the soil leads to grave consequences for seed germination, plant biochemical processes, development, and reproduction, all of which result in the output of reactive oxygen species and eventually plant death. Despite the possibility of thermal, chemical, or a combination of the two to remediate contaminated soils, their applications are complicated and costly. Some plants, called hyperaccumulators, exhibit the potential to clean up pollutants safely from the soil and water at a low cost. All the technologies used in soil decontamination are called phytoremediation. Some physiological (e.g., phytoextraction, phytostabilization, phytotransformation, rhizofiltration, phytostimulation, phytovolatilization, phytodegradation, and phytodesalination) and molecular parameters (e.g., genes, peptides, and proteins) are involved in heavy metals accumulation of these plants. Although trees are not classified as hyperaccumulators, they have recently proved higher phytoremediation potential than herbaceous plants due to their deeper root system and greater biomass growth. Indeed, this review sheds the light on the application of trees for the phytoremediation of salts and heavy metals in Egypt.

Copper exposure alters the metabolism of the blue crab Callinectes sapidus submitted to osmotic shock

Copper (Cu) is an essential metal capable to alter many metabolic and physiological processes in animal species, depending on the environmental concentration and salinity. The present study evaluated the effects of Cu exposure on the metabolism of the blue crab Callinectes sapidus under different osmotic situations. Crabs were acclimated at two different salinities conditions (30 and 2). Subsequently, they were exposed to Cu during 96 h at each salinity and under hypo-osmotic shock. Results demonstrated that Cu exposure increased whole-body oxygen consumption. In addition, the activity of LDH decreased while citrate synthase increased in anterior gills from animals submitted to hypo-osmotic shock. This scenario indicates extra stress caused by sudden environmental osmotic changes, as commonly observed in estuarine environments, when combined with copper exposure. Therefore, the activity of LDH and citrate synthase enzymes might be sensitive indicators for aquatic toxicology studies approaching Cu contamination in estuarine environments.

Review on methods for determination of metallothioneins in aquatic organisms

One aspect of environmental degradation in coastal areas is pollution from toxic metals, which are persistent and are bioaccumulated by marine organisms, with serious public health implications. A conventional monitoring system of environmental metal pollution includes measuring the level of selected metals in the whole organism or in respective organs. However, measuring only the metal content in particular organs does not give information about its effect at the subcellular level. Therefore, the evaluation of biochemical biomarker metallothionein may be useful in assessing metal exposure and the prediction of potential detrimental effects induced by metal contamination. There are some methods for the determination of metallothioneins including spectrophotometric method, electrochemical methods, chromatography, saturation-based methods, immunological methods, electrophoresis, and RT-PCR. In this paper, different methods are discussed briefly and the comparison between them will be presented.