Neurotoxic Effects Of Mercury On Mactra Chinensis

Because of its strong toxicity in the low dosages,mercury pollution has attracted much attention in marine pollution problems.Mercury in water has a variety of forms,and can be transformed each other,so that the pollution of mercury is complex,which brings some difficulties to the prevention and treatment.Food chain is an important way that transferred heavy metals from aquatic organisms to human.The living style is filter-feeding in bivalves molluscs,and bivalves are poor in mobility and vulnerable to heavy metal pollution,which is suitable to be used as indicator organism for mercury pollution.Through ICP-MS,proteomics and other molecular biology techniques to investigate the accumulation and the neurotoxic effects of mercury on Mactra chinensis.Screening of protein biomarkers that characterize the toxicological effects of pollutants to provide some theoretical basis for the monitoring and evaluation of intertidal environmental organisms,in order to provide reference for further research on mercury pollution control.The paper obtains the following results:Methods:1.Determination of Mercury Accumulation in Various Tissues of Mactra chinensis by ICP-MS Technique.2.Summary of the neurotoxic effects of mercury on Chinese pupae by using iTRAQ proteomics technique to determine differential protein expression and OmicsBean platform for enrichment and functional analysis of differential proteins.3.The prediction of mercury neurotoxicity by proteomics was verified by the detection of classical neurotransmitters.Results:1.The accumulation of mercury in different concentrations was detected by ICP-MS.The results showed that the mercury accumulation in gill was the highest in low concentration group,and the accumulation of mercury in liver was the largest in high concentration group.Different concentrations of mercury can be accumulated in foot ganglion.2.We screened a large number of ribosome-related proteins and amines,amino acids,peptide neurotransmitters and some nervous system-related proteins in a total of947 differentially expressed proteins by iTRAQ,demonstrating the mercury toxicity to Mactra chinensis.3.After the mercury stress treatment glutamate content increased,while the content of acetylcholine decreased in foot ganglion.In conclusion:After proteomics analysis of the foot ganglion from the exposured in inorganic mercury Mactra chinensis,The results showed that neurotoxicity was mainly caused by the changes of neurotransmitter,synapse-related proteins and channel proteins,interfering with the assembly of cytoskeleton and the expression of apoptosis-related proteins.On the other hand,Mactra chinensis through regulating the redox system,heavy metal detoxification proteins,metal transporters and other related proteins in response to mercury toxicity.The change trend of glutamate and acetylcholine in Chinese clam foot ganglion after inorganic mercury exposure was the same as that of methyl mercury.