Abstract
The production and pollutant emission is often derivate from human activity, by utilizing natural resources, developing infrastructure, agriculture, industry, urbanization among others. Pollutant is everything that is introduced by man, directly or indirectly, of substances or energy that may result in adverse effects on life. The main classes of pollutants are organic, nutrients, oils, radioactive isotopes, heavy metals, pathogenic, sediments, garbage among others. The disposal on water bodies is an old habit of how we deal with our disposal. Consequently, great part of the aquatic environment become polluted in various extents. Among the organic pollutants, we can found a class of molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). This class of molecules are a big family of compounds derivated from fused benzene rings that comprise from the more simple naftalene, through structures containing more than ten rings and its derivatives. Their toxicity comes from its hydrophobic property. They can induce conformational changes on membranes, increasing their permeability. Consequently, the photosynthetic capacity of those organisms can be harmed, leading to serious imbalances on the electron chain transport an uncoupling oxidative phosphorylation. The anthracene (ANT) is a small molecule formed by three benezenic rings fused and is one of the 16 prioritary PAH according to the US EPA and in a report from European Union Risk Acessment, ANT was classified as "highly toxic for aquatic organisms and can cause long term effects on the environment". Besides that, ANT can be easily photooxidated and their products can be even more toxic, specially quinones, that can interfere on respiration and photosynthesis, leading to problems on algae development and ecosystem collapse caused by low biomass, oxygen deficiency and inhibition of detoxification processes. The amount of information about the effects on metabolism of the photosynthetic organisms is limited. To this end, we will be using the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii aiming extent further the knowledge of the toxic effects caused by anthracene on the microalgae metabolism.
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