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Folsomia candida exposed to cadmium spiked soil

ABSTRACT: Increasing concern about pollution of our environment calls for advanced and rapid methods to estimate ecological toxicity. The use of gene expression microarrays in environmental studies can potentially meet this challenge. We present a novel method to examine soil toxicity. We exposed the collembolan Folsomia candida to soil containing an ecologically relevant cadmium concentration, and found a cumulative total of 1586 differentially expressed transcripts across three exposure durations, including transcripts involved in stress response, detoxification, and hypoxia. Additional enrichment analysis of gene ontology (GO) terms revealed that antibiotic biosynthesis is important at all time points examined. Interestingly, genes involved in the "penicillin and cephalosporin biosynthesis pathway" have never been identified in animals before, but are expressed in F. candida’s tissue. The synthesis of antibiotics can possibly be a response to increased cadmium-induced susceptibility to invading pathogens, which might be caused by repression of genes involved in the immune-system (C-type lectins and Toll receptor). This study presents a first global view on the environmental stress response of an arthropod species exposed to contaminated soil,and provides a mechanistic basis for the development of a gene expression soil quality test. Keywords: cadmium, soil, Collembola, environmental genomics

ORGANISM(S): Folsomia candida

PROVIDER: GSE11122 | GEO | 2008/08/08

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA106903

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are common pollutants in soil, have negative effects on soil ecosystems, and are potentially carcinogenic. The Springtail (Collembola) Folsomia candida is often used as an indicator species for soil toxicity. Here we report a toxicogenomic study that translates the ecological effects of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon phenanthrene in soil to the early transcriptomic responses in Folsomia candida. Microarrays were used to examine two different exposure concentrations of phenanthrene, namely the EC10 (24.95 mg kg-1 soil) and EC50 (45.80 mg kg-1 soil) on reproduction of this springtail, which evoked 405 and 251 differentially expressed transcripts, respectively. Fifty transcripts were differential in response to either concentration. Many transcripts encoding xenobiotic detoxification and biotransformation enzymes (phases I, II, and III) were upregulated in response to either concentration. Furthermore, indications of general and oxidative stress were found in response to phenanthrene. Chitin metabolism appeared to be disrupted particularly at the low concentration, and protein translation appeared suppressed at the high concentration of phenanthrene; most likely in order to reallocate energy budgets for the detoxification process. Finally, an immune response was evoked especially in response to the high effect concentration, which was also described in a previous transcriptomic study using the same effect concentration (EC50) of cadmium. Our study provides new insights in the molecular mode of action of the important polluting class of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soil animals. Furthermore, we present a fast, sensitive, and specific soil toxicity test which enhances traditional tests and may help to improve current environmental risk assessments and monitoring of potentially polluted sites. Folsomia candida was exposed to phenanthrene spiked soil or untreated (reference/control) soil for 2 days. Two different concentrations of phenanthrene were used, 24.95 and 45.80 mg/kg soil which represent the EC10 and EC50 on reproduction, respectively. For each concentration treatment 4 biological replicates were used, replicate samples consisted of total RNA extracted from ~30 animals exposed in the same jar to either reference or phenanthrene spiked soil. Phenanthrene treated samples were always hybridized to reference samples in an evenly distributed dye-swap manner, which resulted in total in 8 hybridizations of 16 samples.

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Folsomia candida exposed to cadmium spiked soil

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