ASSESSMENT OF THE OXIDATIVE STATUS OF BLACK SEA MUSSELS (Mytilus galloprovincialis Lamark, 1819) FROM BULGARIAN COASTAL AREAS WITH INTRODUCTION OF SPECIFIC OXIDATIVE STRESS INDEX

摘要

Traditionally, the risk assessment of pollution and changes in marine ecosystems was based mainly on physicochemical analysis of environmental samples or contents of pollutants in sentinel marine organisms while the specific biological effects on the organisms themselves remained underestimated. More recently, a number of biomarkers and also multi-biomarker approaches were used to assess ecosystem health and identify impacts of environmental stress on organisms. The aim of the present study was to estimate the pro/antioxidant status in the gills, hepatopancreas and foot of specimens of M. galloprovincialis from different sites of the Bulgarian Black Sea coastal area by assessment of lipid peroxidation, glutathione levels and the activities of antioxidant enzymes catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase, as well as the glutathione reductase and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase. All tested tissues were susceptibile to oxidative stress (OS). The studied indicators varied among organs and sites. In order to estimate the overall effect of the marine environment on the studied mussels we constructed a Specific Oxidative Stress index (SOS) which is based on a new algorithum for interpreting the OS biomarkers. The proposed methodology can be successfully used to screen the state of the coastal marine environment using M. galloprovincialis as indicator.