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Sea urchin coelomocytes cultured on nanoporous aluminium oxide as a potential tool for marine environmental monitoring

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Abstract

Oceans and seas are of paramount importance to the health of planet Earth and human kind. Marine ecosystems should be defended against attack of polluting agents by continuous monitoring; the means of such monitoring should be as green as possible, i.e. based on sensors manufactured by biocompatible and easily disposable raw materials. In this study, we lay the basis for the future development of biosensors of marine environment based on sea urchin cells cultured on nanoporous aluminium oxide. These cells are promising as in previous works they demonstrated high response to stressors, and the proposed substrates have low costs since fabricated by inexpensive anodization process from consumer quality aluminium foils. Coelomocytes of the Mediterranean sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus were cultured on the nanoporous alumina for up to 5 days in vitro. Then, a biochemical characterization was carried out, checking the cholinergic system pathway by means of serotonin autofluorescence induced by aldehyde exposure and by expression and functionality of neuroactive molecules, such as acetylcholinesterase and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. Both living cell quality and system biochemistry were not affected after the culture, and both electrical modulation and non-self-reactivity were maintained. These findings suggest the possibility of using the sea urchin immune cells cultured on nanoporous alumina as tools for monitoring the marine water quality, based on their electrical response.

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Acknowledgements

All the experimental activity was founded by Institutional Research Founds from University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy (FRA 2018–2019). The authors wish to thank all who contributed to the sea urchins collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNR-IAS, Via de Marini 6, 16149, Genoa, Italy

    C. Gambardella

  2. DISTAV, University of Genova, Viale Benedetto XV, 16149, Genoa, Italy

    C. Falugi

  3. MCF, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30, 16163, Genoa, Italy

    M. Salerno

  4. DICCA, Università di Genova, Via Opera Pia 15, 16145, Genoa, Italy

    M. Neviani & O. Paladino

Authors
  1. C. Gambardella
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  2. C. Falugi
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  3. M. Salerno
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  4. M. Neviani
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  5. O. Paladino
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Contributions

OP and CF contributed to conceptualization; OP, MS and CG provided resources; OP, CF, MS and CG provided the methodology; MS, MN, CF and CG performed the investigation; CG performed formal analysis; CG and OP contributed to visualization; CF was involved in writing—original draft preparation; CG, OP and MS was involved in writing—review and editing; OP and CF performed supervision and project administration.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to O. Paladino.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving animals (sea urchin P. lividus) were in accordance with European ethical standards. The type of animals involved in this research is included in the Annex III of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive 2008/56/EC on the approximation of laws, regulation and administrative provisions regarding the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. The regulation lays down what is commonly known as the 3Rs (Reduce, Refine and Replace) approach.

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Editorial responsibility: M. Abbaspour.

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Gambardella, C., Falugi, C., Salerno, M. et al. Sea urchin coelomocytes cultured on nanoporous aluminium oxide as a potential tool for marine environmental monitoring. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 17, 2937–2948 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-020-02644-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-020-02644-w

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