Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXVIII, Issue 1
Written by Laura FEODOROV, Mihai NITA-LAZAR, Calina Petruța CORNEA
Anthropic pressure on the environment threaten its biodiversity and subsequently, its sustainability. Nowadays, the research focusses on the development of a new efficient screenings regarding contaminants toxic impact on aquatic and terrestrial environments based on specific biological models, as bioindicators. Cellular and molecular biomarkers are considered to appear very fast under a pollution or climate change stress, before any significant changes at the organism level, and to be specific and sensitive indicators of environmental quality and adaptation mechanisms. Changes at the molecular level could provide rapid information and prediction patterns regarding the occurrence of lethal, sub-lethal, or adaptive effects on biotopes under the influence of anthropogenic stressors. The combined use of bioindicators and biomarkers could provide a comprehensive picture of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems health status and they could facilitate to identify the environmental issues. In this review, we aimed to establish a relationship between pollution and specific adaptation mechanism responses at the molecular level such as biomarkers. Moreover, we analyzed how biomarkers respond to exposure to different toxic substances and exposure levels, determining dose-response relationships, and biomarker response time.
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