Screening of various harmful compounds in a new bacterial biological model

Abstract

The rapidly increasing population corroborated with a growing industrialization has resulted in the bioaccumulation in the environment of a large variety of chemical compounds. More than fifty thousand chemicals, most of which are xenobiotics, are in common use. Furthermore, new chemicals are continually and regularly introduced to the environment raising the concern about their bioaccumulation as well as the harmful effect of xenobiotics as such or as metabolite products. There are a few pollution treatment methods such as land-filing, recycling, pyrolysis and incineration, but unfortunately they can lead to the formation of toxic intermediates. In addition, these methods are expensive and sometimes more difficult to execute, especially in extensive agricultural sites where the use of pesticides is wide-spread. The harmful effect of chemical compounds on organisms living in a polluted area is assessed by acute and chronic toxicity tests performed on various biological models including fih, crustaceans, algae, etc. More recently, based on microorganism long-term ability to adapt to environments, they became an useful tool to assess the toxicity of harmful compounds released in the environment. In this study, we used a bacterial model as biosensors for detecting the harmful effect of pesticides as well as decontaminants of pesticide-infested environment. The gram positive and gram-negative bacteria proved to be a simple, rapid and inexpensive tool to determine the ecotoxicity of Reldan EC40 pesticide.