SINTEF Ocean, Climate and Environment, 7465 Trondheim, Norway.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, 02543, United States.
Aquat Toxicol. 2024 Feb;267:106825. doi: 10.1016/j.aquatox.2023.106825. Epub 2023 Dec 28.
Oil and gas industries in the Northern Atlantic Ocean have gradually moved closer to the Arctic areas, a process expected to be further facilitated by sea ice withdrawal caused by global warming. Copepods of the genus Calanus hold a key position in these cold-water food webs, providing an important energetic link between primary production and higher trophic levels. Due to their ecological importance, there is a concern about how accidental oil spills and produced water discharges may impact cold-water copepods. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge of the toxicity of petroleum on North Atlantic and Arctic Calanus copepods. We also review how recent development of high-quality transcriptomes from RNA-sequencing of copepods have identified genes regulating key biological processes, like molting, diapause and reproduction in Calanus copepods, to suggest linkages between exposure, molecular mechanisms and effects on higher levels of biological organization. We found that the available ecotoxicity threshold data for these copepods provide valuable information about their sensitivity to acute petrogenic exposures; however, there is still insufficient knowledge regarding underlying mechanisms of toxicity and the potential for long-term implications of relevance for copepod ecology and phenology. Copepod transcriptomics has expanded our understanding of how key biological processes are regulated in cold-water copepods. These advances can improve our understanding of how pollutants affect biological processes, and thus provide the basis for new knowledge frameworks spanning the effect continuum from molecular initiating events to adverse effects of regulatory relevance. Such efforts, guided by concepts such as adverse outcome pathways (AOPs), enable standardized and transparent characterization and evaluation of knowledge and identifies research gaps and priorities. This review suggests enhancing mechanistic understanding of exposure-effect relationships to better understand and link biomarker responses to adverse effects to improve risk assessments assessing ecological effects of pollutant mixtures, like crude oil, in Arctic areas.
北大西洋的石油和天然气产业逐渐向北极地区靠拢，而全球变暖导致的海冰消退预计将进一步推动这一进程。冷水性浮游动物桡足类中的真桡足类在这些冷水食物网中占据关键地位，为初级生产与更高营养级之间提供了重要的能量联系。由于其生态重要性，人们担心意外的石油泄漏和生产污水排放可能会对冷水桡足类产生影响。在这篇综述中，我们总结了目前关于北大西洋和北极真桡足类桡足类石油毒性的知识。我们还回顾了最近从桡足类 RNA 测序的高质量转录组中获得的信息，这些信息确定了调节蜕皮、滞育和繁殖等关键生物学过程的基因，从而提示了暴露、分子机制与对较高水平生物组织影响之间的联系。我们发现，这些桡足类动物的可用生态毒性阈值数据为它们对急性生源暴露的敏感性提供了有价值的信息；然而，对于毒性的潜在机制以及对桡足类动物生态学和物候学的长期影响，我们仍然知之甚少。桡足类转录组学扩展了我们对冷水桡足类动物中关键生物学过程如何受到调节的理解。这些进展可以帮助我们了解污染物如何影响生物过程，从而为跨越从分子起始事件到具有监管相关性的不利影响的效应连续体的新知识框架提供基础。在诸如不利结局途径（AOPs）等概念的指导下，这些努力可以实现知识的标准化和透明化表征和评估，并确定研究差距和优先事项。本综述建议加强对暴露-效应关系的机制理解，以更好地理解和将生物标志物反应与不利效应联系起来，从而改进对评估污染物混合物（如原油）对北极地区生态影响的风险评估。
