Abstract:
Butachlor is one of the most widely used amide herbicides. Although the researches on the reproductive toxicity of butachlor to freshwaterfish have been reported extensively, few studies addressing the reproductive toxicity of butachlor on the offshore fishes are available. The present study was conducted to explore the effects of butachlor on ovarian development in
Sebastiscus marmoratus, a common offshore fish distributes in the southeast coast of China, and to gain insight into its mechanism. After exposing to butachlor at environmental concentrations (2, 20 and 200 ng/L) for 50 d, the development of ovarian germ cell was depressed to different extents. While 17β estradiol (E2) was decreased in the ovaries, the activity of Caspase-3 increased. Realtime PCR showed that the expressions of
CYP19s and
ERβ were down-regulatedin the ovaries. These results indicated that butachlor can cause significant reproductive toxicity to
Sebastiscus marmoratus, and the inhibited expression of
CYP19s gene and
ERβ in the ovary leads to the decrease of estrogen level and apoptosis of egg cells in early development.