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High-resolution Mass Spectrometry of Skin Mucus for Monitoring Physiological Impacts in Fish Exposed to Wastewater Effluent at a Great Lakes AOC
Citation:
Mosley, J., D. Ekman, J. Cavallin, Dan Villeneuve, G. Ankley, AND Tim Collette. High-resolution Mass Spectrometry of Skin Mucus for Monitoring Physiological Impacts in Fish Exposed to Wastewater Effluent at a Great Lakes AOC. 2017 SETAC North America Meeting, MN, Minneapolis, November 12 - 16, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
Slide presentation at the 38th Annual Meeting of the North America Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
Description:
High-resolution mass spectrometry is advantageous for monitoring physiological impacts and contaminant biotransformation products in fish exposed to complex wastewater effluent. We evaluated this technique using skin mucus from male and female fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) exposed to control water or treated wastewater effluent at 5%, 20%, and 100% levels for 21 days, using an onsite, flow-through system providing real-time exposure at the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District (WLSSD) wastewater treatment plant. Both sex-specific and non-sex-specific responses were observed in the mucus metabolome, the latter suggesting the induction of general compensatory pathways for xenobiotic exposures. Altogether, 85 statistically significant treatment-dependent metabolite changes were observed and 30 of those were annotated with probable structures. The mummichog software package was used to elucidate impacted biochemical pathways and to enhance metabolite annotation. Partial least squares regression models revealed relationships between the mucus metabolomes and upregulated hepatic mRNA transcripts reported previously for these same fish. These regression models suggest that mucus metabolomic changes reflected, in part, processes by which the fish biotransformed xenobiotics in the WLSSD effluent. Further, we detected a phase II transformation product of bisphenol A in the skin mucus of male fish. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the utility of mucus as a minimally invasive matrix for simultaneously assessing exposures and effects of real-world mixtures of contaminants.
