An integrative approach to understanding soil pollutants' effects on earthworms

了解土壤污染物对蚯蚓影响的综合方法

• 批准号: NE/D007755/1
• 负责人: Jacob Bundy
• 金额: $ 6.2万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2006 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FD007755%2F1
• 关键词: integrative; approach; understanding; soil; pollutants

Maintaining soil quality is vital for the preservation of biological diversity of soil communities, and also has agricultural implications, as polluted soils may affect crop growth. Earthworms play a key ecological role in soils: they speed up the rate of carbon turnover by physical mixing and grinding of soils and plant material. Thus, it is extremely important to protect earthworms from pollution, in order both to preserve biodiversity, and to maintain soil ecological functioning. They can also serve as sentinel species for understanding how significant the effects of soil pollution really are, i.e. if earthworm populations are impacted it is an indication that contaminant levels are of real environmental concern. We will study the effect of chemical pollutants on the well-characterized epigeic earthworm species Lumbricus rubellus, using four model chemicals that are representative of broad classes of pollutants: copper and cadmium (potentially toxic metals), atrazine (pesticides), and fluoranthene (aromatic organic compounds, produced both by natural processes and as industrial wastes). This will be done by building on samples and data generated by an existing research consortium (NER/T/S/2002/00021, 'Exploiting terrestrial sentinel and model species to integrate tiers of biological response to pollution'). This project has already carried out reproducible exposures at ecologically relevant sub-lethal levels for three of these chemicals (cadmium, atrazine, fluoranthene); copper-exposed worms will be available as well. The metabolic effects of these pollutants will be assessed using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to profile extracts of the earthworm tissue. NMR is a non-targeted universal detector for small-molecule metabolites, and thus can provide a profile or fingerprint of the earthworms' metabolism. The spectra are complex and information-rich, and therefore multivariate pattern-recognition methods are needed for optimum analysis and interpretation of the data. This combination of non-targeted metabolite profiling together with multivariate data handling is known as metabolomics. The metabolomic data will be complemented by transcriptomic microarray data (profiles of thousands of genes whose expression may be affected by the chemicals), and population end-points (e.g. number of cocoons laid by each worm, growth rates). Thus, we are proposing an integrative approach to understanding this important biological and environmental question. The so-called 'omic' (comprehensive profiling) data sets will allow us to develop hypotheses about how the different chemicals cause toxic and developmental effects in earthworms. However, often it is difficult to use omic data to generate any information that is relevant to actual field populations. Critically, we will be able to relate the omic data sets to life-cycle models that have direct relevance to ecological effects on earthworm populations. This will give us the power to interpret the metabolomic observations in a way that is truly significant for protecting earthworms from different chemical pollutants.

保持土壤质量对于保护土壤群落的生物多样性至关重要，而且还对农业产生影响，因为受污染的土壤可能影响作物生长。蚯蚓在土壤中发挥着关键的生态作用：它们通过物理混合和研磨土壤和植物材料来加快碳周转率。因此，为了保护生物多样性和维持土壤生态功能，保护蚯蚓免受污染极其重要。它们还可以作为哨兵物种，用于了解土壤污染的影响究竟有多严重，即如果蚯蚓种群受到影响，则表明污染物水平是真实的环境问题。我们将研究化学污染物的影响上的特点，epigeic的蚯蚓rubellus种，使用四个模型的化学物质，是代表广泛的污染物类别：铜和镉（潜在的有毒金属），阿特拉津（农药），和荧蒽（芳香族有机化合物，产生的自然过程和工业废物）。这项工作将以现有研究联合会提供的样本和数据为基础（NER/T/S/2002/00021，“利用陆地哨兵和模式物种整合对污染的生物反应层次”）。该项目已经对其中三种化学品（镉、阿特拉津、荧蒽）进行了生态上相关的亚致死水平的可重复接触试验;也将提供接触铜的蠕虫。这些污染物的代谢效应将使用核磁共振（NMR）光谱来评估，以分析组织提取物。NMR是一种非靶向的小分子代谢物通用检测器，因此可以提供蚯蚓代谢的概况或指纹。光谱是复杂的和信息丰富的，因此，多元模式识别方法是必要的最佳分析和解释的数据。这种非靶向代谢物分析与多变量数据处理的组合被称为代谢组学。代谢组学数据将由转录组学微阵列数据（其表达可能受化学品影响的数千个基因的概况）和种群终点（例如，每只蠕虫产下的茧的数量，生长率）补充。因此，我们提出了一个综合的方法来理解这一重要的生物和环境问题。所谓的“组学”（综合分析）数据集将使我们能够建立关于不同化学物质如何对蚯蚓造成毒性和发育影响的假设。然而，通常很难使用组学数据来生成与实际实地种群相关的任何信息。至关重要的是，我们将能够将组学数据集与生命周期模型联系起来，这些模型与生态对生物种群的影响直接相关。这将使我们有能力以一种真正重要的方式解释代谢组学观察结果，以保护蚯蚓免受不同化学污染物的侵害。

项目成果

'Systems toxicology' approach identifies coordinated metabolic responses to copper in a terrestrial non-model invertebrate, the earthworm Lumbricus rubellus.

• DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-6-25
• 发表时间: 2008-06-03
• 期刊: BMC BIOLOGY
• 影响因子: 5.4
• 作者: Bundy, Jacob G.;Sidhu, Jasmin K.;Rana, Faisal;Spurgeon, David J.;Svendsen, Claus;Wren, Jodie F.;Sturzenbaum, Stephen R.;Morgan, A. John;Kille, Peter
• 通讯作者: Kille, Peter