METALLOTHIONEIN IN PERSIAN STURGEON, ACIPENSER PERSICUS L. FROM CASPIAN SEA

F. Shariati, M. Pourkazemi, S. Shariati, B. Mahboonia, M. Pourdehghani, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Abstract

The metallothionein and metals were measured in gills, kidney, intestine and liver of wild Persian sturgeon caught in the coast of southern part of the Caspian Sea. According to the results, the concentration of metallothionein was in the range of 45.87-154.66 microgram per gram wet weight with the maximum and minimum concentrations in liver and gills, respectively. The trend of metallothionein concentration in the cytosol of tissues was: liver> intestine> kidney> gills.
Also, the results of Spearman correlation test showed that there was not significant correlation between metallothionein (p> 0.05) and weight and age of fish.
Average concentrations of cadmium in liver and kidney of fish were 203.44 and 191.27 microgram per litre cytosol. there was significant correlation between metallothionein and cadmium in cytosol of liver (r2= 0.850, p≤ 0.01). In the kidney, the correlation between cadmium and metallothionein was significantly positive (r2= 0.731, p≥ 0.05). But there was not such significant correlation in the gills and intestine (p≥ 0.05).
Hg concentration in cytosol of the gills was more than other tissues. Correlation of determined metals with MT in experimental fish showed that there is no significant correlation between metals and MT in intestine and gills. But, there was significant positive correlation between MT with Cu (r2=0.881) and Cd (r2=0.850) in liver. There was no significant relation between Hg and MT in all experimental tissues.

Keywords: metallothionein, Acipenser persicus, metal, pollution, tissue