Endocrine disruption by plastic additives in sea urchin, Paracentrotus lividus

The Ecotoxicology research team (ECOTOX), integrated within the EcoCost group, focus its research on enhancing the understanding of the chemical pollution on marine ecosystems with a view to identifying and mitigating those that pose a significant threat to their ecological integrity and provide the scientific basis to develop environmental criteria and standards for the protection of coastal marine ecosystems.

Pedro Campoy, member os this team and directed by Ricardo Beiras, is developing under his doctoral thesis a tool to evaluate the possible endocrine disruption caused by different pollutants resulting for urban wastewater which have been shown to reach relevant concentrations in the marine ecosystems; mainly plastic additives such as phthalates, alkylphenols, flame retardants (brominates, phosphates) or UV filters. The development of this tool focuses on evaluating the response at the molecular and tissue level (gonad, digestive, celom) in the sea urchin P. lividus during the sexual maturation phase (gametogenesis).

During his conference, Pedro presented the preliminary results of the effects of this pollutants at histological, physiological and proteomic level. The conference took place at the conference room of the ECIMAT, and is permanently available on UVigoTV website: : https://tv.uvigo.es/video/5da80f591e19c008263c6802