Brine Shrimp Cytotoxicity was not Warrant for Teratogenicity: Comparative Analysis of Seaweed Methanolic Extracts Collected from Tamil Nadu Coastal Region on Brine Shrimp and Zebra Fish Embryos

Abstract

Brine shrimps have been served as valuable toxicological model systems. Besides, they are being used as preliminary models to identify the effective bioactive drug candidates against different diseases including cancer in recent decades. In the present study, we comparatively analyzed twenty-eight seaweed methanolic extracts for their cytotoxicity and teratogenicity using brine shrimp nauplii and zebra fish embryos (ZFEs). All of the seaweed extracts killed brine shrimps, but, only, Ulva lactuca showed hatchability inhibition on developing ZFEs. The delayed-hatched nauplii were similar to controls in body length and heartbeat. The U. lactuca extract showed no acute toxicity on the hatched nauplii up to five days (240 hpf). The chromatographical fractionation of the U. lactuca extract resulted in neither hatching delay nor deformities. This study also implied that there was no warranty for the teratogenicity even they may possess the cytotoxicity. Recent studies showed that the embryos could be valuable models for cancer drug discovery and further selective analysis on U. lactuca could give a potential drug candidate for cancer therapy since, it showed selective inhibition on hatching.

Keywords: Cytotoxicity, teratogenicity, hatching delay, Ulva lactuca, brine shrimps

Cite this Article

Meenakshi SK, Nagarajan M, Sundararaman M. Brine shrimp cytotoxicity was not warrant for teratogenicity: Comparative analysis of seaweed methanolic extracts collected from Tamil Nadu coastal region on brine shrimp and zebra fish embryos. Research & Reviews: A Journal of Life Sciences. 2018; 8(2): 24–32p.