Monitoring the Effect of Metal Ions on the Mobility of Artemia salina Nauplii

Biosensors

Varvara Kokkali¹  Ioannis Katramados² 

[1] Cranfield Health, Vincent Building, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK; E-Mail:;School of Engineering, Whittle building, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK; E-Mail:

关键词: Artemia salina;    crustaceans;    image processing;    mobility;    toxicity assay;   

DOI  :  10.3390/bios1020036

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This study aims to measure the effect of toxic aqueous solutions of metals on the mobility of Artemia salina nauplii by using digital image processing. The instrument consists of a camera with a macro lens, a dark chamber, a light source and a laptop computer. Four nauplii were inserted into a macro cuvette, which contained copper, cadmium, iron and zinc ions at various concentrations. The nauplii were then filmed inside the dark chamber for two minutes and the video sequence was processed by a motion tracking algorithm that estimated their mobility. The results obtained by this system were compared to the mortality assay of the Artemia salina nauplii. Despite the small number of tested organisms, this system demonstrates great sensitivity in quantifying the mobility of the nauplii, which leads to significantly lower EC₅₀ values than those of the mortality assay. Furthermore, concentrations of parts per trillion of toxic compounds could be detected for some of the metals. The main novelty of this instrument relies in the sub-pixel accuracy of the tracking algorithm that enables robust measurement of the deterioration of the mobility of Artemia salina even at very low concentrations of toxic metals.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.