You are here:
Impacts of WWTP Effluents on the Hepatic Metabolome of Male and Female Fathead Minnows in the South Platte River, Colorado
Citation:
Ekman, D. Impacts of WWTP Effluents on the Hepatic Metabolome of Male and Female Fathead Minnows in the South Platte River, Colorado. SETAC North America 35th Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, CANADA, November 09 - 13, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented at SETAC North America, 35th Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC
Description:
Metabolomics is rapidly becoming established as an eefective tool for studying the responses of organisms, such as fish, to various environmentally relevant stressors. While the majority of the work has been laboratory-based, successful application of the technique in recent years to field-based studies is expanding the utility of metabolomics to environmental monitoring applications. For example, metabolomics was shown useful for studying responses in caged fish to effluent exposure from a pulp and paper mill plant in the Great Lakes. Another report demonstrated the potential of the technique for assessing the impacts of waste water treatment plants (WWTPs) and agricultural operations on fish deployed in various rivers in the state of Minnesota. Recently, we have applied meatbolomics with caged fish in the South Platte River, Colorado to determine impacts in a western river site suspected of estrogenic effects on fish. H-NMR spectra collected from the livers of caged male and female fathead minnows (FHM; Pimepales promelas) deployed at locations below and above the WWTPs were used to determine impacts of the exposures on the FHM hepatic metabolome. Results of these analyses reveal distinct impacts with regard to each WWTP and in a sex dependent manner. Moreover, metabolomics responses closely paralleled the results of targeted assays that were conducted to assess the estrogenicity of the exposure (cell-based bioassays, mRNA VTG). Comparison of fish deployed upstream of the WWTPs (i.e., the reference site) to those deployed below revealed a much greater similarity of the male and female metabolomes in the WWTP effluent-exposed fish, possibly suggesting feminization of the males. As further evidence of feminization, we observed considerable similarities in metabolic responses of field-deployed male fish with those males exposed to a model estrogen (EE2) in a previously conducted laboratory-based study. These results, along with additional findings from this study, will be presented in the context of their implications for environmental monitoring.
