Evaluating in Vivo Toxicity of Chiral Pesticides Using the Zebrafish (Danio rerio) Embryo Model

摘要

Enantioselectivity in toxicology of chiral pesticides has become one of the frontier topics facing toxicology. However, the toxicological data of chiral pesticides is in great scarcity. This is because of the different toxicological profiles between enantiomers and the racemates, and the dearth of enough enantiopure samples for toxicity assay. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos provide an attractive model for determining the acute toxicity in relation to environmental risk assessment of chiral pesticides, offering the possibilities to perform small-scale, high-throughput analyses and less sample needs compared with other in vivo models. Beyond their application for determining acute toxicity, zebrafish embryos are also excellent models for understanding toxic mechanisms and the indication of possible adverse and long-term effects. Various applications of zebrafish embryos have been used for studying toxicogenomics, such as the effect of chemicals on gene and protein expression patterns. Other major possible applications include studies in metabolism, bioconcentration and biomarkers. These unique properties make them especially suitable for in vivo enantioselective toxicity assay of chiral pesticides.