4.7 Article

Duckweed biomarkers for identifying toxic water contaminants?

Journal

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH
Volume 26, Issue 15, Pages 14797-14822

Publisher

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-018-3427-7

Keywords

Water contaminants; Toxicity testing; Duckweeds; Lemna minor; Lemna gibba; Biomarkers; Toxicant identification

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Surface or ground waters can be contaminated with numerous toxic substances. The duckweeds Lemna minor and Lemna gibba are widely used for assaying waterborne toxicity to higher plants in terms of growth inhibition and photosynthetic pigment reduction. These tests cannot, however, in themselves determine the nature of the agents responsible for toxicity. Morphological, developmental, physiological, biochemical, and genetic responses of duckweeds to exposure to toxic water contaminants constitute biomarkers of toxic effect. In principle, the very detection of these biomarkers should enable the contaminants having elicited them (and being responsible for the toxicity) to be identified. However, in practice, this is severely compromised by insufficient specificity of biomarkers for their corresponding toxicants and by the lack of documentation of biomarker/toxin relationships. The present contribution illustrates the difficulties of using known water contaminant-related duckweed biomarkers to identify toxins, and discusses possibilities for achieving this goal.

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