Effect Based Monitoring in Water Safety Planning - Medium to high throughput bioanalytical tools and decision-making tool for selection of bioassays

“Effect-based monitoring using bioanalytical tools (i.e., in vitro bioassays and well plate-based in vivo assays) are recommended to complement chemical analysis for water quality monitoring. However, there are many different bioassays available, which raises questions about which bioassays and how many should be applied for water quality assessment. Therefore, this report aimed to identify bioassays commonly applied to water extracts and develop a decision-making tool to provide guidance on bioassay selection.
An extensive literature search using Web of Science and Scopus was conducted in January 2020 to identify applicable bioassays. The suitability of each collected paper was screened based on outlined criteria, with 124 suitable studies identified. Surface water (65% of studies) and wastewater (52% of studies) were the most commonly studied water types, with the majority of studies applying solid- phase extraction (SPE) (89%) to extract water samples prior to bioanalysis.
Based on the literature search, commonly applied assays indicative of xenobiotic metabolism, receptor-mediated effects, reactive toxicity, adaptive stress responses and apical effects were compared and their ability to detect effects in different water extracts was evaluated. Assays indicative of activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), activation of the pregnane X receptor (PXR), activation of the estrogen receptor (ER), activation of the androgen receptor (AR), phytotoxicity, oxidative stress response and bacterial toxicity were able to detect effects in wastewater, surface water and drinking water after sufficient enrichment. In contrast, mammalian reporter gene assays indicative of activation of the thyroid receptor (TR) and activation of the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) did not induce a response in any of the tested water extracts.”

(Citation: Neale, P., Leusch, F., Escher, B. – Effect Based Monitoring in Water Safety Planning – Medium to high throughput bioanalytical tools and decision-making tool for selection of bioassays, – GWRC EBM in WSP – WP3.2 (2020))