Concern in pesticides!

Concern in pesticides!

By: Juan Carlos Onofre

The overuse of many chemicals in different products such as pesticides or antibiotics have brought concern on the effect of these into the environment. One of these chemicals is alachlor, this chemical is a worldwide pesticide cataloged as a priority substance. The effects of this chemical were studied by Gil and fellows, S. cerevisiae was used as the model organism for this research; this chemical is known for its ability to inhibit lipid biosynthesis, but there are not enough studies explaining the mechanisms of this chemical in organisms. This research focused on explaining the mechanisms induced by this chemical into S. cerevisiae by measuring the genetic expression of this organism, it was found that alachlor affects the iron’s regulation of S. cerevisiae in different ways, by increasing and decreasing some iron uptake genes in reductive and non-reductive pathways, some of these results lead to the idea that alachlor affects the uptake of iron. The importance of this research is that many health problems and human deficiencies are related to a bad regulation of iron, therefore, it is as relevant for any other living organism as it is for humans. Further research would be necessary to understand the decrease of the iron uptake reductive mRNA levels in FET3 and FTR1 genes.

Figure 6. Represents some of the effects of alachlor in the S. cerevisiae organism used.

Gil FN, Bellí G, Viegas CA. (2016). The Saccharomyces cerevisiae response to stress caused by the herbicidal active substance alachlor requires the iron regulon transcription factor Aft1p. Environmental Microbiology. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1462-2920.13439/full.