Determination of the targeted carbendazim metabolites in zebrafish water tank by liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry

ABSTRACT

Carbendazim, a common pesticide, has shown signs of causing cancer, infertility and toxicity to organisms. Due to its intense use, this fungicide has become a persistent compound in the environment, raising the importance of better understanding its behaviour, metabolic pathways and effects on organisms. Zebrafish is considered an excellent animal model, being able to rapidly absorb compounds in water, mimicking what occurs in the aquatic environment. Therefore, the aim of this work was to evaluate carbendazim metabolites in zebrafish water tank using liquid chromatography coupled to a high-resolution mass spectrometer (LC-HRMS) to highlight analytical targets in order to monitor carbendazim exposure in aquatic environments. For this purpose, treatment, negative and stability groups were defined. In addition, water samples were collected from the tanks and analyses were carried out by LC-HRMS. The results allowed the putative annotation of 7 target metabolites. This study applied the analysis of zebrafish water tank for evaluation of target metabolites of carbendazim as a promising approach, since it is a much cleaner matrix than the usual biological matrices. These metabolites can ensure detectability and further strengthen confidence in monitoring carbendazim exposure in aquatic environments. To the best of our knowledge, there is no one study that has evaluated carbendazim metabolites produced by zebrafish, neither in the animal’s body nor in the water tank. This is the first report on the generation of carbendazim metabolites by zebrafish.

KEYWORDS:

• Aquatic environment
• biotransformation
• carbendazim
• LC-HRMS
• pesticides
• zebrafish

Acknowledgments

We thank LBCD-LADETEC from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro for the instrumentation support. We also thank CAPES.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on the Mendeley Data repository at Poleti Martucci, Maria Elvira (2022), “Carbendazim”, Mendeley Data, V1, doi: 10.17632/w6mc9rfp8j.1. https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/w6mc9rfp8j/1

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) of Brazil and Federal University of Ouro Preto (PROPP-UFOP)