Promising potential of high-throughput molecular phenotyping of freshwater fishes for environmental assessment
The recent democratization of high-throughput molecular phenotyping allows the rapid expansion of promising untargeted multi-dimensional approaches (e.g. epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, ...). Indeed, these emerging omics tools, processed for ecologically relevant species, may present innovative perspectives for environmental assessments, that could provide early warning of eco(toxico)logical impairs. In a previous pilot study (Sotton et al., Chemosphere 2019), we explore by 1H NMR the bio-indicative potential of metabolomics analyses on the liver of 2 sentinel fish species (Perca fluviatilis and Lepomis gibbosus) collected in 8 water bodies of the peri-urban Paris area (France). In the present study, we further investigate on the same samples the great potential of high-throughput UHPLC-HRMS/MS analyses. We show that the LC-MS metabolome remarkably allows clear separation of individuals according to the species, but also according to their respective sampling lakes. Interestingly, similar variations of Perca and Lepomis metabolomes occur locally indicating that site-specific environmental constraints drive the metabolome variations beyond the obvious genetic differences between the two species, and seem to be influenced by the production of noxious metabolites by cyanobacterial blooms in certain lakes. Thus, the development of such reliable environmental metabolomics approaches is constituting an innovative bio-indicative tool for ecological stress assessment, such as toxigenic cyanobacterial blooms, and aim at being further follow up.