Environment can be affected by a variety of micropollutants. In this paper, we develop a system to assess the toxicity on an environmental sample, based on the expression of a nanoluciferase under the control of the STB5 promotor in a yeast. The STB5 gene encodes for a transcription factor involved in a pleiotropic drug resistance and in the oxidative stress response. The response of the modified yeast was assessed using 42 micropollutants belonging to different families (antibiotics, pain killers, hormones, plasticizers, pesticides, etc.). Among them, 26 induced an increase of the bioluminescence for concentration ranges from pg.L-1 to ng.L-1. Surprisingly, for concentrations higher than 100 ng.L-1, no response can be observed, suggesting that other mechanisms are involved when the stress increases. Analyzing the different responses obtained, we highlighted six nonmonotonic types of responses. The type of response seems to be independent of the properties of the compounds (polarity, toxicology, molecular weight) and of their family. In conclusion, we highlighted that a cellular response exists for very low exposition to environmental concentration of micropollutants and that it was necessary to explore the cellular mechanisms involved at very low concentration to provide a better risk assessment.
Keywords: Luminescence; Micropollutants; Nonmonotonic responses; STB5 induction; Yeast biosensor.
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