Cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, mutagenicity and estrogenicity evaluation of aquatic resources that are in contact with oil refineries activities

• Grant number: 13/02875-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date until: May 01, 2013
• End date until: November 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Pharmacology - Toxicology
• Principal Investigator: Maria Aparecida Marin Morales
• Grantee: Márcia Miyuki Hoshina
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The advances of the technologies have a lot of benefits, but them come together with the increase of perturbations from different anthropogenic activities that produce by-products that contain large amount of chemicals and are released every year into the environment. Special attention have to be paid to the oil refineries that release into the rivers water rich on heavy metals and inorganic and organic chemical compounds. In the group of organic contaminants most important in the oil refineries it can be found the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and metallic compounds. In general facts, the PAHs as well as the its derivates are associated with the increase of alterations in the living organisms, including humans. For this reason, it is increasing the need of the development and application of tools to evaluate the effects of these contaminants in the environment. This project has as goal the evaluation of genotoxicity, mutagenesis and estrogenicity effects as well as the gen expression alteration in the organisms that are exposed to the water form the Jaguari-SP, Atibaia-SP and Piracicaba-SP rivers. These rivers are located in an affected area of an oil refinery activity in the Paulinia city -SP. In order to achieve the goal it will be used different organisms: modified yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), fish like Oreochromis niloticus and human hepatic cell lines (HepG2). For the S. Cerevisiae it will be used estrogenicity evaluation and dioxin-like assays. For the O. niloticus it will be used genotoxicity test (Comet assay), mutagenesis (micronucleus test) and gene expression (qRT-PCR) in different tissues of the fish. With the cell lines HepG2 it will be used the comet assay techniques, the micronucleus and gene expression. The results obtained during the project will be used to estimate the type of chemical substances that are produced by the process of the oil refinery activities and evaluate if these substances produced genotoxicity, mutagenesis and estrogenicity effects in the organisms. The results may also explain the mode of action of these compounds on the genetic material of the exposed organisms. (AU)