Biochemical and toxicological effects of organic (herbicide Primextra® Gold TZ) and inorganic (copper) compounds on zooplankton and phytoplankton species

In Europe, mainly in the Mediterranean region, an intensive usage of pesticides was recorded during the past 30 years. According to information from agricultural cooperatives of the Mondego valley (Figueira da Foz, Portugal), Primextra® Gold TZ is the most used herbicide in corn crop fields and one of the 20 best-selling herbicides in Portugal. Copper is mainly used in pesticide formulations. This study aims to determine the ecotoxicological and biochemical (namely fatty acid profiles) effects of the herbicide Primextra® Gold TZ and the metal copper on marine plankton. The organisms used in this study are three planktonic species: the marine diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii, the estuarine copepod Acartia tonsa and nauplii of the marine brine shrimp Artemia franciscana. Fatty acids (FAs) are one of the most important molecules transferred across the plant-animal interface in aquatic food webs and can be used as good indicators of stress. The conducted lab incubations show that T. weissflogii is the most sensitive species to the herbicide followed by A. tonsa (EC50 =0;0.0078 mg/L and EC50 =0;0.925 mg/L, respectively), whereas the copepod was the most sensitive species to the metal followed by T. weissflogii (EC50 =0.234 mg/L and EC50 =0.383 mg/L, respectively). A. franciscana was the most tolerant organism both to the herbicide and to the metal (EC50 =20.35 mg/L and EC50 = 18.93 mg/L, respectively). Changes in the FA profiles of primary producer and primary consumers were observed, with the increase of saturated FA and decrease of unsaturated FA contents, especially of highly unsaturated FAs that can be obtained mainly from food and therefore are referred to as ‘essential FA’. The study suggests that discharges of Primextra® Gold TZ or other pesticides mainly composed by copper may be a threat to plankton populations causing changes in the FA contents and thus in their nutritive value, with severe repercussions for higher trophic levels and thus the entire food web

Catalogues of mammalian long noncoding RNAs: modest conservation and incompleteness

A comparative evolutionary analysis of two mouse long noncoding RNA libraries reveals a much larger pool of noncoding RNAs remains yet to be discovered

Multi-target optimization of solid phase microextraction to analyse key flavour compounds in wort and beer

Despite the literature comprises numerous studies dealing with the analysis of wort and beer flavour-related compounds by HS-SPME followed by GC-MS quantification, no generalized consensus exists regarding the optimal conditions for the extraction procedure. The complex chemistry nature of these matrices, the number of analytes, as well as the number and interactions among parameters affecting the extraction performance, requires the adoption of optimal experimental design protocols. This aspect is often overlooked and often not properly addressed in practice. Therefore, in the present work, the optimal conditions under which a range of wort and beer analytes can be extracted and quantified were analysed. The optimal extraction conditions were presented at two levels of aggregation: global (untargeted) and key-flavour analysis. Experimental data was generated by Definitive-Screening-Design, followed by model development and optimization. Both approaches were compared and critically analysed. For vicinal-diketones group, a complete validation study for the optimal conditions is presented.publishe

The ethics of a globalized world : a universal ethic?

In a global economy, global and universal ethics are a necessity. How can ethics be connected to the economy in an interdependent world? From all the different theories on ethics, which should we choose? Do utilitarianism and the maximization of utility promote the happiness of all or do they promote selfishness? What are the roles of international institutions in the definition of and respect for universal duties and rights? What is the relationship between the two waves of globalization and income distribution inequality around the world? These are questions that this paper raises and attempts to answer, putting forward some contributions towards the definition of a global ethic based on duties, virtues and fraternity; a universal ethic reconciling partiality in feelings with the impartiality of duties; an ethic which combining justice with solidarity and in which the means justify the ends

Study of Xenopus orthologs of novel genes expressed in the mouse AVE

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Microbiota-assisted phytoremediation of metal contaminated soils by sunflower

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tropical Plant Responses to Climate Change

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Fatty Acids’ Profiles of Aquatic Organisms: Revealing the Impacts of Environmental and Anthropogenic Stressors

There is a great concern about the impacts of climate changes namely due to salinity seawater and temperature alterations in aquatic organisms with the estuarine and coastal environments being the major affected areas. The intensive usage of chemicals in an indiscriminate way in agriculture practices, achieving, in some cases, values above the limits of contamination authorized by the European legislation, also drastically affects the surrounded estuarine areas with profound consequences to the water quality and the aquatic communities. It is known that stressors affect organisms’ physiological conditions with recent works concerning alterations in the fatty acid (FA) profiles associated with environmental and contamination events that become more frequent. FA plays a key role in immune and physiological functions and is associated with the prevention of some diseases, shown to be good bio‐indicators to assess the organisms’ impacts under stress conditions. Thus, this chapter proposes to address natural (salinity and temperature) and chemical (herbicide and metal) stressors’ impacts in the FA profiles of Thalassiosiraweissflogii and Cerastodermaedule and infers about the effects on organisms’ physiological processes and along the food web. Consequences in food resources and to healthier and nutritious food consumption with benefits to human beings are also assessed

PHYTOENERGY: energetic valorisation of phytoremediation derived biomass

There are presently more than 3 million contaminated sites all over EU, according to the EEA (report 25186 EN), with the contamination with heavy metals being of particular concern, as they are not degradable. Soil recovery is thus becoming an urgency and diverse approaches can be applied. From these, phytoremediation has shown to be an attractive low cost alternative as it promotes the establishment of a vegetation cover, stabilizing these degraded sites and allowing for the slow extraction of the contaminants. In spite that the fate of the harvested plants is a common complication for its implementation, it can also represent an opportunity for producing added value. This work intends to assess the possibility of the production of biodiesel resulting from the transterification of sunflower seed oil with bioethanol resulting from the processing of sunflower stems. Sunflower plants growing either in agricultural and metal contaminated soils were assessed and the quality of the successive energetic products was evaluated. Sunflower seeds were used for oil extraction, with observable extraction efficiencies of up to 20 ml oil/m 2 ; plant stems were used for bioethanol production with yields of up to 280 ml/m 2 ; finally, biodiesel was generated via transterification. The final biodiesel as well as the obtained oil and bioethanol were characterized and it was possible to observe that the contamination of the soils with metals did not affect significantly the quality of the products, namely in concerning metal levels. This study reports thus the successful energetic valorisation of plants grown in degraded soils.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio