The State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, The Key Laboratory of Aquatic Biodiversity and Conservation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430072, China.
Center for Carbon Neutrality in the Third Pole of the Earth, Tibet University, Lhasa, 850000, China; Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Wetland and Watershed Ecosystem, College of Science, Tibet University, Lhasa, 850000, China.
Environ Res. 2024 Mar 15;245:118015. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.118015. Epub 2023 Dec 22.
Heavy metals (HMs) contamination of water bodies severely threatens human and ecosystem health. There is growing interest in the use of duckweeds for HMs biomonitoring and phytoremediation due to their fast growth, low cultivation costs, and excellent HM uptake efficiency. In this review, we summarize the current state of knowledge on duckweeds and their suitability for HM biomonitoring and phytoremediation. Duckweeds have been used for phytotoxicity assays since the 1930s. Some toxicity tests based on duckweeds have been listed in international guidelines. Duckweeds have also been recognized for their ability to facilitate HM phytoremediation in aquatic environments. Large-scale screening of duckweed germplasm optimized for HM biomonitoring and phytoremediation is still essential. We further discuss the morphological, physiological, and molecular effects of HMs on duckweeds. However, the existing data are clearly insufficient, especially in regard to dissection of the transcriptome, metabolome, proteome responses and molecular mechanisms of duckweeds under HM stresses. We also evaluate the influence of environmental factors, exogenous substances, duckweed community composition, and HM interactions on their HM sensitivity and HM accumulation, which need to be considered in practical application scenarios. Finally, we identify challenges and propose approaches for improving the effectiveness of duckweeds for bioremediation from the aspects of selection of duckweed strain, cultivation optimization, engineered duckweeds. We foresee great promise for duckweeds as phytoremediation agents, providing environmentally safe and economically efficient means for HM removal. However, the primary limiting issue is that so few researchers have recognized the outstanding advantages of duckweeds. We hope that this review can pique the interest and attention of more researchers.
水体中的重金属（HMs）污染严重威胁着人类和生态系统的健康。由于浮萍生长迅速、培养成本低且对重金属具有优异的吸收效率，因此越来越多的人对其用于重金属生物监测和植物修复产生了兴趣。在这篇综述中，我们总结了浮萍的研究现状及其在重金属生物监测和植物修复中的适宜性。自 20 世纪 30 年代以来，浮萍就已被用于植物毒性测定。一些基于浮萍的毒性测试已被列入国际准则。浮萍还因其在水生环境中促进重金属植物修复的能力而受到认可。对浮萍种质进行大规模筛选，以优化其用于重金属生物监测和植物修复，仍然至关重要。我们进一步讨论了重金属对浮萍的形态、生理和分子影响。然而，现有的数据显然还不够充分，尤其是在浮萍对重金属胁迫的转录组、代谢组和蛋白质组反应及分子机制的解析方面。我们还评估了环境因素、外源物质、浮萍群落组成和重金属之间的相互作用对其重金属敏感性和重金属积累的影响，这些因素在实际应用场景中需要加以考虑。最后，我们从浮萍株系选择、培养优化和工程浮萍等方面，确定了提高浮萍生物修复效率的挑战并提出了相应的方法。我们预计浮萍作为植物修复剂具有广阔的前景，为重金属去除提供了环境安全且经济有效的手段。然而，主要的限制因素是，很少有研究人员认识到浮萍的突出优势。我们希望这篇综述能引起更多研究人员的兴趣和关注。
