Environmental glucocorticoids corticosterone, betamethasone and flumethasone induce more potent physiological than transcriptional effects in zebrafish embryos
Loading...
Authors
Author (Corporation)
Publication date
01.07.2019
Typ of student thesis
Course of study
Collections
Type
01A - Journal article
Editors
Editor (Corporation)
Supervisor
Parent work
Science of the Total Environment
Special issue
DOI of the original publication
Series
Series number
Volume
Issue / Number
Pages / Duration
183-191
Patent number
Publisher / Publishing institution
Elsevier
Place of publication / Event location
Edition
Version
Programming language
Assignee
Practice partner / Client
Abstract
Many glucocorticoids occur in the aquatic environments but their adverse effects to fish are poorly known. Here we investigate effects of the natural glucocorticoid corticosterone and the synthetic glucocorticoids betamethasone and flumethasone in zebrafish embryos. Besides studying the effects of each steroid, we compared effects of natural with synthetic glucocorticoids, used as drugs. Exposure at concentrations of 1 μg/L and higher led to concentration-related decrease in spontaneous muscle contractions at 24 h post fertilization (hpf) and increase in heart rate at 48 hpf. Betamethasone showed a significant increase at 0.11 μg/L in heart rate. Corticosterone also accelerated hatching at 60 hpf at 0.085 μg/L. Transcription of up to 24 genes associated with different pathways showed alterations at 96 and 120 hpf for all glucocorticoids, although with low potency. Corticosterone caused transcriptional induction of interleukin-17, while betamethasone caused transcriptional down-regulation of the androgen receptor, aromatase and hsd11b2, indicating an effect on the sex hormone system. Furthermore, transcripts encoding proteins related to immune system regulation (irg1l, gilz) and fkbp5 were differentially expressed by corticosterone and betamethasone, while flumethasone caused only little effects, mainly alteration of the irg1l transcript. Our study shows that these glucocorticoids caused more potent physiological effects in early embryos than transcriptional alterations in hatched embryos, likely due to increased metabolism in later developmental stages. Thus, these glucocorticoids may be of concern for early stages of fish embryos in contaminated aquatic environments.
Keywords
Betamethasone, Corticosterone, Flumethasone, Glucocorticoids, Physiological effects, Zebrafish embryos
Subject (DDC)
Event
Exhibition start date
Exhibition end date
Conference start date
Conference end date
Date of the last check
ISBN
ISSN
0048-9697
1879-1026
1879-1026
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
Yes
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
License
Citation
Willi, R. A., Faltermann, S., Hettich, T., & Fent, K. (2019). Environmental glucocorticoids corticosterone, betamethasone and flumethasone induce more potent physiological than transcriptional effects in zebrafish embryos. Science of the Total Environment, 183–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.03.426