Cellular Oxidant/Antioxidant Network: Update on the Environmental Effects Over Marine Organisms

ABSTRACT

Aquatic organisms are exposed and adjust to a wide variety of environmental challenges including natural and anthropogenic factors. Natural sources are understood the effects of temperature, and saline fluctuations, oxygen availability, the relative abundance of chemical elements and pathogenic invasion. On the contrary, anthropogenic factors are considered the availability of heavy metals, the presence of hydrocarbons, industrial and urban wastes, and pesticides. Moreover, these organisms suffer, in order to maintain homeostasis, growth and reproduction, the effect of temporal and spatial variations. All the environmental changes (natural and non-natural) may cause a different degree of stress in aquatic organisms, via induction of disbalance between the generation and elimination of reactive oxygen species and reactive nitrosative species. A brief summary on the actual knowledge on the establishment, by environmental effects, of oxidative/nitrosative stress and the effect on the antioxidant system in marine organisms, is presented in this review to contribute to the deeper understanding of the complexity of the metabolic and physiological changes that aquatic organisms are constantly suffering.

Keywords:

Anthropogenic environmental changes, natural environmental changes, marine organisms, nitrosative stress, oxidative stress, reactive oxygen species.