Abstract
Mexico City has been classified as one megacity, its altitude, thermal inversions, and high seasonal radiation are factors that prevent dispersion of pollutants, which effects are detrimental to health. Therefore, it is important to have an organism that allows evaluate the damage caused by such exposure, as is the case of mosses that obtain nutrients from the atmosphere; this property makes them excellent biomonitors to evaluate genotoxic damage caused by exposure to pollutants, in addition to its large accumulation capacity. For these reasons and to relate the effects of atmospheric pollution with a biological response, we propose to use the moss Hypnum amabile as a bioaccumulator of atmospheric pollutants and biomonitor of the genotoxic effect that the air pollution can induce it through the comet assay. Mosses were placed in five localities of Mexico City and the metropolitan area on the first days of each month of the dry (cold and warm) and rainy seasons, with a 30-day exposure, after which they were changed for a new sample (for 8 months). Each month, the moss exposed was collected and nuclei were isolated to perform comet assay. To demonstrate heavy metal bioaccumulation capacity, samples were observed in a transmission electron microscope and qualitative microanalysis by scanning electron microscopy was carried out parallel. The chemical analysis detected 14 heavy metals by mass spectrometry method with inductively coupled plasma source. Additionally, 22 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were also determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Analysis of variance and Kruskal-Wallis test were performed to compare DNA damage of each station against control, which was maintained in the laboratory in a chamber with filtered air. This is the first study on the genotoxicity of mosses exposed to the atmosphere of Mexico City and metropolitan area that in addition to proving their accumulation capacity shows their ability to respond to atmospheric pollutants.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dirección de Asuntos del Personal Académico (DGPA), UNAM for the Postdoctoral fellowship of César Damián Alonso-Murillo. The authors would like to thank Reyna Lara-Martínez for technical support in transmission electron microscopy samples preparation, Carlos Linares-López for support in microanalysis by energy dispersive spectrometry, Ana Rosa Flores Márquez for her technical assistant in the comet assay, Elizabeth Hernández Alvarez for heavy metals determination support, and to Cynthia Paz-Trejo for her valuable assistance in the revision of the manuscript.
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Authors received financial support from Secretaría de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación through SECITI/057/2016 project.
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Author contributions Sandra Gómez-Arroyo and César Damián Alonso-Murillo drafted the first version of the manuscript. Sandra Gómez-Arroyo project planning and designed the scope of the study. Miguel Ángel Zavala-Sánchez collection of samples, sampling, and comet assay standardization, César Damián Alonso-Murillo collection of samples, sampling, and standardization of transmission and scanning electron microscopy techniques, Josefina Cortés-Eslava support in the comet assay and data interpretation, Omar Amador-Muñoz standardization of methodology and interpretation of PAH data, Luis Felipe Jiménez-García support in the supervision of the methodology and interpretation of electron microscopy data, and Ofelia Morton-Bermea standardization of technique and interpretation of heavy metal data. All authors contributed to the writing of this paper. All authors approved the submission of this version for publication.
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Gómez-Arroyo, S., Zavala-Sánchez, M.Á., Alonso-Murillo, C.D. et al. Moss (Hypnum amabile) as biomonitor of genotoxic damage and as bioaccumulator of atmospheric pollutants at five different sites of Mexico City and metropolitan area. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 9849–9863 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11441-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11441-4