Broadcast spawning into a genotoxic environment: Implications on sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) embryos.

Authors

Fengjia Liu, Kim S Last, Theodore B Henry, Helena C Reinardy

Published in

Mutation research. Genetic toxicology and environmental mutagenesis. Volume 915. Pages 503966. Epub Nov 06, 2026.

Abstract

Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is an oxidative and genotoxic chemical that has widespread use as marine antifoulant treatment, anti-parasitic treatment in finfish farming, and chemical waste discharged from municipal sources. Marine species can experience short-term exposure to high concentrations before dilution and degradation of H₂O₂. Benthic adult sea urchins spawn gametes directly into the water column, making them a valuable sentinel model for assessing impacts of pelagic exposure. Sea urchin gametes were exposed to H₂O₂ (1 mM, 10 min) and evaluated for DNA damage (strand breaks, oxidised nucleotides, and total cytosine methylation) by the modified fast micromethod and cross-fertilized to produce sea urchin embryos to assess DNA damage and developmental anomalies. A significant increase of DNA damage with strand scission factor of up to 0.11 ± 0.01 (mean ± SD) was detected in blastula embryos (age 24 h) and up to 0.10 ± 0.01 (mean ± SD) in re-exposed blastula embryos fertilised from unexposed eggs and exposed (1 mM H₂O₂) sperm. No significant differences in total methylation were detected in any cross-fertilisation treatments after gamete exposure, but there was a non-significant trend in hypermethylation in embryos fertilised from unexposed eggs and exposed sperm, suggesting that paternal exposure to H₂O₂ poses a grater genotoxic risk to developing embryos than maternal exposure. The consequences of hypermethylation for larval development and survival remain unresolved. Integrating measures of DNA damage with epigenetic methylation changes across the gamete-embryo transition and early embryonic development provides critical insight into cross-generational mechanistic impacts of genotoxicants on ecologically critical broadcast spawning species in marine ecosystems.

PMID:
43034083
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 15 Nov 2026.

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