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Ecotoxicity Testing with Nematodes
Summary
This review summarized the use of nematodes—particularly Caenorhabditis elegans—as model organisms for ecotoxicity testing of chemicals in water, sediment, and soil. The authors found that C. elegans offers a well-validated, rapid, and cost-effective platform for evaluating microplastic toxicity across multiple endpoints and can be extended to multi-species test systems that better reflect ecological complexity.
Nematodes are suitable organisms for testing the toxicity of chemicals in water, sediment and soil, with Caenorhabditis elegans being the most frequently used nematode species in toxicity testing. Moreover, also multi-species test systems are available for assessing effects of chemicals at higher ecological levels (community/food web level). C. elegans has successfully been used for testing the toxicity of field samples from soils and freshwater sediments, with standardized methods helping to achieve reliable data (ISO 10872:2020; ASTM E2172-22). Additionally, C. elegans is an excellent model organism for studying toxicity mechanisms in vivo, as single chemicals or chemical mixtures can be tested in various substrates, such as water, sediments and soil, by using a large range of toxicity end points, exposure methods and high-throughput systems. A wide variety of toxicants were tested with C. elegans, where this species turned out to be particularly suitable for testing toxic particles (e.g. microplastics, nanoparticles).