Studies of rhodium, platinum and palladium derivatives of some arsena-, carba- and telluraboranes

The research described in this thesis involved the synthesis and characterisation of rhodium, platinum and palladium derivatives of arsena-, carba- and telluraboranes.

Proteomic approach to oxidative stress in Daphnia magna

The keystone aquatic organism Daphnia magna is extensively used to assess the toxicity of chemicals. This has recently lead to an increase in the omics literature focusing on daphnids, an increase fuelled by the sequencing of the Daphnia pulex genome. Yet, no omics study has looked directly at oxidative stress (OS) in daphnids, even though OS is of primary importance in the response of aquatic organisms to their changing environment and is often induced by anthropogenic xenobiotics. This thesis thus focuses on the application of redox-proteomics, the study of the oxidative modification of proteins, to D. magna Specifically, daphnids were exposed to copper or paraquat, two well studied prooxidants, and protein carbonyls were labelled with fluorescein-5-thiosemicarbazide prior to twodimensional electrophoresis (2DE). This showed clearly that both compounds affect a different portion of the proteome. The identified proteins indicated that energy metabolism was affected by paraquat, while copper induced a reduction of the heat shock response (heat shock proteins, proteases and chaperones) a counterintuitive result which may be adaptative to metal toxicity in arthropods. The same approach was then applied to the study of the toxicity mechanism of silver nanoparticles (AgNP), an increasingly utilised form of silver with expected environmental toxicity, and its comparison to silver nitrate. The results demonstrate that, although less toxic than silver ions, AgNP toxicity functions through a different mechanism. AgNP toxicity is thus not a product of silver dissolution and increased protein carbonylation indicates that AgNP cause OS. Interestingly three of the four tested compounds altered vitellogenin levels and oxidation. Vitellogenins could thus represent an interesting subproteome for the detection of stress in daphnids. Finally, an experiment with oxidised BSA demonstrates the applicability of solid phase hydrazide in the enrichment of undigested carbonylated proteins.