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conferenceseries
.com
Volume 2
Environment Pollution and Climate Change
ISSN: 2573-458X
Climate Change 2018 &
Global ENVITOX 2018
October 04-06, 2018
October 04-06, 2018
London, UK
16
th
Annual Meeting on
Environmental Toxicology and Biological Systems
&
5
th
World Conference on
Climate Change
JOINT EVENT
Electrophysiological methods for environmental toxicology and pharmacology: Standard organisms
and amphioxus models
David E Schmitt
SSMI, USA
M
irroring developments in safety pharmacology, the search for high-throughput, electrophysiological methods for
the testing, screening, and establishment of environmental regulatory monitoring protocols is a worthwhile, as an
adjunct to bioassays, such as whole effluent toxicity (WET) tests. A lingering problem with WET testing is assessing initial
vitality of the organism. Accessible, metabolically active tissues, such as respiratory membranes of minnows and mussels,
are possibilities for electrophysiological recording and early detection of toxicity. Excitable tissues are additionally useful,
especially those with tonic or phasic bursting that may be up and down regulated, expanding the dynamic range of responses
to contaminants (e.g., fish lateral line cells). The spinal neural networks of lamprey underlying motoneuronal commands
for fictive sinusoidal swimming are readily challenged with minimal-volume perfusate containing substances have been well
studied with extracellular, intracellular and patch-clamping methods. Measures of unilateral burst quality, intersegmental
phase lag (forward and backward swimming) and alternation quality (sinusoidal swimming) are candidates for developing
figures of merit. Amphioxus possesses the general Bauplan of the Chordate nervous system and could be expected to respond
to a range of contaminants. Amphioxus possesses a quasi-tubular (U-shaped), nervous system involuted from the embryonic
ciliated exterior which, in larval form, is confluent via an opening between ambient water and the central canal. The latter
possesses excitable cilia (mechanically and chemically) and photic cells. The cilia may represent a system by which the larval
form sampled nutritive gradients of peptides, carbohydrates and noxious substances in ambient water and moved accordingly.
Ependymal cilia also are motile and sensitive to body movements. Spinal networks, governed by the brain, mediate the basic
approach and withdraw behavior (with potential for correlative behavioral assay of noxious contaminants). With all of the
potential for WET testing, these organisms offer numerous additional opportunities for electrophysiological approaches to
identifying and monitoring contaminants.
deschmitt@protonmail.comEnviron Pollut Climate Change 2018, Volume 2
DOI: 10.4172/2573-458X-C1-003