Effects of cadmium, inorganic mercury and methyl-mercury on the physiology and metabolomic profiles of shoots of the macrophyte Elodea nuttallii

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Inglés. Macrophytes are known to bioaccumulate metals, but a thorough understanding of tolerance strategies and molecular impact of metals in aquatic plants is still lacking. The present study aimed to compare Hg and Cd effects in a representative macrophyte, Elodea nuttallii using physiological endpoints and metabolite profiles in shoots and cytosol. Exposure 24 h to methyl-Hg (30 ng L), inorganic Hg (70 ng L) and Cd (280 μg L) did not affect photosynthesis, or antioxidant enzymes despite the significant accumulation of metals, confirming a sublethal stress level. In shoots, Cd resulted in a higher level of regulation of metabolites than MeHg, while MeHg resulted in the largest number of regulated metabolites and IHg treatment regulated no metabolites significantly. In cytosol, Cd regulated more metabolites than IHg and only arginine, histidine and mannose were reduced by MeHg exposure. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis of data suggested that exposure to MeHg resulted in biochemical changes including aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis, glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, nitrogen metabolism, arginine and proline metabolism, cyanoamino acid metabolism, while the treatment of Cd stress caused significant variations in aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis and branched-chain amino acids pathways. Data supports an impact of MeHg on N homeostasis, while Cd resulted in an osmotic stress-like pattern and IHg had a low impact. Marked differences in the responses to MeHg and IHg exposure were evidenced, supporting different molecular toxicity pathways and main impact of MeHg on non-soluble compartment, while main impact of IHg was on soluble compartment. Metabolomics was used for the first time in this species and proved to be very useful to confirm and complement recent knowledge gained by transcriptomics and proteomics, highlighting the high interest of multi-omics approaches to identify early impact of environmental pollution.