Détermination du niveau de toxicité des sédiments de rivière par le test de bioluminescence bactérienne

A partir de références bibliographiques encore réduites, les auteurs ont mis au point un protocole expérimental d'évaluation de la toxicité des sédiments de rivière, après extraction au dichlorométhane et mesure de la toxicité par le lest de Bioluminescence Bactérienne.Ce protocole simple appliqué à quarante-trois prélèvements correspondant à des situations de pollution diversifiées, a permis d'établir et de proposer une typologie des sédiments en fonction de leur niveau de toxicité.Correspondant à une approche nouvelle (tests biologiques de toxicité sur sédiments), la méthodologie apparaît particulièrement intéressante pour la gestion patrimoniale des cours d'eau (réseaux de surveillance, mise en évidence de situations de pollutions), et devrait être intégrée dans les opérations de mesure de l'impact des pollutions toxiques sur les écosystèmes aquatiques.As toxic substances in river water are not easy to detect and to measure, sediments able to precipitate them have been userd, successfully, to quaintly metals and a limited number of organics. Actually, analytical determinations, very expansive, time consuming and never exhaustive, are not an adequate means for a general estimation of the presence of toxic organic substances.Another developing approach consists in determining effects not the substances themselves (contained in the sediments) but their toxic effects on biotests applied directly on all the sediments or on the extracts. This approach has been used by relatively few teams, principally in North-America and in The Netherlands, in limited areas, to evaluate the local impacts of industrial effluents on sea and-or river waters. On the contrary, the object of this work is to measure the interest of this kind of approach, at a large Water Basin, first to establish the toxic profiles of rivers with areas of pollution, and second to constitute a memorization, susceptible of being compared at regular intervals for an estimation of general depollution policies .Based on data taken from the literature, an organic extraction of sediments with dichloromethane as solvent (without pretreatment) and photobacterium phosphoreum luminescence inhibition test were chosen. Actually, according to the literature, dichloromethane is the must convenient solvant and toxic activities of extracts are well correlated with organic toxic contents in the few cases where, exceptionally, the two approaches have been carried out simultaneously. Similarly, the bacterial luminescence test, Microtox (commercial name), quick and inexpensive, is well correlated with results from other biotests when, occasionally, both were utilised. Moreover, Microtox was well tested in the Agence laboratory.Different conditions of extraction were carefully tested, before the adoption of the definite protocol : whole sediments (10-g) are mixed (slow agitation in rolling flasks) for 6 hours with dichloromethane (100-mL) and sodium sulphate (50 g). Dichloromethane is then eliminated and the remaining solid materials are washed twice with fresh dichloromethane (2 x 20 mi). Dichloromethane extract and washings are collected, dried over sodium sulphate and concentrated (below 40 °C) to 1 mL, further adjusted to 3 mL. A portion measured accurately of this concentrate is added to ethanol and concentrated to remove dichloromethane.Bacterial bioluminescence tests, in duplicate, are performed on ethanol extracts, diluted (1 %) in salified (sodium chloride 2 %) distilled water. Estimates of the EC 50 (concentration causing a 50 % reduction in bioluminescence) obtained using linear regression analysis are converted into Toxic Units and referred to the net organic weight, measured separately, at 550 °C. This expression of results is particularly relevant when sediments with different organic net weights are compared.The protocol has been applied to sediments collected at 43 sites in the principal rivers of Rhône Méditerranée Corse Basin and in special distant from significant domestic and industrial activities.The toxic amplitude observed (ratio of l/200 between lowest and highest toxic units obtained with the panel) and the good reproductibility of the whole process (10 % to 25 %) were consistent with a trial subdivision in 5 classes as follow :Class 1 : Out of pollution - Class 2 : Moderate toxicity - Class 3 : Important toxicity - Class 4 : Very important toxicity - Class 5 : Exceptional toxicity.The relevancy of this classification was estimated when sediments were classed according to their toxic content. The classification proves to be correct in must cases. Exceptionally toxic sediments were collected in sites affected by large industries and agglomerations as (CHASSE and SAINT-VALLIER) on River Rhone near Lyon and important chemical plants, or GIVORS, on the small River GIER, markedly affected by many various industries. On the contrary sediments of moderate toxicity corresponded to sites relatively far from sources of important pollutions, e.g., ARLES on the River RHONE near the sea and a number of sites on the River SAONE. Moreover, when repeated sampling was performed on the same sites, the results were consistent, belonging to the same class of toxicity.The general object of this work was not to determine a definite classification of sediment toxicities, but to assess the relevancy of this approach. In our opinion, it was proved that bioassays on sediment extracts, and specially the bacterial bioluminescence assay, are a valuable tool, before the material impossibility to determine the toxic substances content. Moreover this approach could be used at the Basin. More investigations are necessary to define more accurately the number and level of toxic classes and e.g. to establish correlations with perturbations of benthic communities living in the sediments. It is also a contribution to the general knowledge and action based on biotests performed on effluents and different compartments of rivers

Towards a numerical simulation of direct manufacturing of thermoplastic parts by powder laser sintering COMPLAS XI

Direct manufacturing technology using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) on thermoplastic powders allows obtaining final parts in a short time, with classical polymer density and a high flexibility of shape and evolution of parts. The physical base of this process is the coalescence of grains, which initiates the densification of powder during SLS. This study presents a 2D C-NEM simulation of the whole process. We firstly focus on the chosen method and its advantages. We present the simulation details and validate the modeling through a 2D infinite cylinders coalescence simulation. The mesh of the grain interface is continuously adapted to the local curvature to better capture the coalescence phenomenon. We are able to simulate the sintering of twelve particles laying on a support within some hours

Combining multivariate genomic approaches to elucidate the comorbidity between autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

BACKGROUND: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are two highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorders. Several lines of evidence point towards the presence of shared genetic factors underlying ASD and ADHD. We conducted genomic analyses of common risk variants (i.e. single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) shared by ASD and ADHD, and those specific to each disorder. METHODS: With the summary data from two GWAS, one on ASD (N = 46,350) and another on ADHD (N = 55,374) individuals, we used genomic structural equation modelling and colocalization analysis to identify SNPs shared by ASD and ADHD and SNPs specific to each disorder. Functional genomic analyses were then conducted on shared and specific common genetic variants. Finally, we performed a bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis to test whether the shared genetic risk between ASD and ADHD was interpretable in terms of reciprocal relationships between ASD and ADHD. RESULTS: We found that 37.5% of the SNPs associated with ASD (at p < 1e-6) colocalized with ADHD SNPs and that 19.6% of the SNPs associated with ADHD colocalized with ASD SNPs. We identified genes mapped to SNPs that are specific to ASD or ADHD and that are shared by ASD and ADHD, including two novel genes INSM1 and PAX1. Our bidirectional Mendelian randomization analyses indicated that the risk of ASD was associated with an increased risk of ADHD and vice versa. CONCLUSIONS: Using multivariate genomic analyses, the present study uncovers shared and specific genetic variants associated with ASD and ADHD. Further functional investigation of genes mapped to those shared variants may help identify pathophysiological pathways and new targets for treatment

Characterizing the Epigenetic and Transcriptomic Responses to Perkinsus marinus Infection in the Eastern Oyster Crassostrea virginica

© Copyright © 2020 Johnson, Sirovy, Casas, La Peyre and Kelly. Eastern oysters in the northern Gulf of Mexico are routinely infected with the protistan parasite Perkinsus marinus, the cause of the disease commonly known as dermo. Recent experimental challenges among Atlantic coast populations have identified both resistant and susceptible genotypes using comparative transcriptomics. While controlled experimental challenges are essential first assessments, expanding this analysis to field reared individuals provides an opportunity to identify key genomic signatures of infection that appear both in the laboratory and in the field. In this study we combined reduced representation bisulfite sequencing with 3′ RNA sequencing (Tag-seq) to describe two molecular phenotypes associated with infection in oysters outplanted at a common garden field site. These combined approaches allowed us to examine changes in DNA methylation and gene expression for a large number of individuals (n = 40) that developed infections during the course of a common garden outplant experiment. Our epigenetic analysis of DNA methylation identified significant changes in gene body methylation associated with increasing infection intensity, across genes associated with immune responses. There was a smaller transcriptomic response to increasing infection intensities with 32 genes showing differential expression; however, only 40% of these genes were found to also be differentially methylated. While there was no clear pattern between direction of differential methylation and gene expression, there was a significant effect of percent methylation on gene-by-gene expression levels and the coefficient of variation in gene body methylation between treatments. These results show that in C. virginica, heavily methylated genes have high levels of gene expression with low levels of variation. Comparing our differential expression results with previously published experimental P. marinus challenges identified overlapping expression patterns for genes associated with C1q-domain-containing and V-type proton ATPase proteins. Through our comparative transcriptomic approach using field reared individuals and co-expression network analysis we have also been able to identify a network of genes that change in expression in response to infection. These combined analyses provide evidence for a conserved response to P. marinus infections across infection intensities and suggest that DNA methylation may not be a reliable predictor of differential gene expression in long-term infections

Evaluation of the resistance of CAC and BFSC mortars to biodegradation : laboratory test approach

Biodeterioration of cementitious materials in sewer networks is a major concern for health and economic reasons. Essentially, it is due to the biological oxidation of H2S into H2SO4 leading to a local progressive dissolution of the cementitious matrix and the precipitation of expansive products likely to provoke cracks. However, it is widely known that CAC has a better performance in such environments but the mechanisms are not very well understood. Nevertheless, previous studies focused mainly on measuring the mass loss of the specimens accompanied with little information on the chemical alteration of the cementitious matrix. This study aims to compare the performance of CAC and BFSC mortars in sewer conditions using laboratory test (BAC-test). Leaching kinetics were evaluated by concentrations measurements of cementitious cations in the leached solutions and of sulphate production by the microorganisms. Moreover, SEM observations coupled with EDS analyses allowed the identification of the chemical alteration of the cementitious matrix