Antioxidant responses and lipid peroxidation in gills and hepatopancreas of the mussel Perna viridis upon exposure to the red-tide organism Chattonella marina and hydrogen peroxide

In this study, we investigated the production of hydrogen peroxide (H ₂O ₂) by the red-tide organism Chattonella marina. Subsequently, we examined the antioxidant responses as well as lipid peroxidation in gills and hepatopancreas of the mussel Perna viridis upon exposure to C. marina at environmentally realistic concentrations (10 ³ and 10 ⁴cellsml ^-1). Despite the extracellular levels of H ₂O ₂ generated were up to ~0.5 (at 10 ³cellsml ^-1) and 20μM (at 10 ⁴cellsml ^-1), no significant differences could be observed in any of the examined biochemical parameters (i.e. catalase (CAT), glutathione (GSH), superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), glutathione-S-transferase (GST), glutathione reductase (GR) and lipid peroxidation (LPO)) in mussels between treatment and control groups. In another experiment, where mussels were exposed to H ₂O ₂, no responses were induced at the concentration up to 0.5mM. These data collectively indicate that the production of H ₂O ₂ by C. marina is not high enough to elicit antioxidant responses in mussels. As such, reactive oxygen species (ROS) is unlikely to be an important toxicological mechanism of C. marina. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.