In a rapidly urbanizing global environment, anthropogenic sources of pollution [e.g., heavy metals, pharmaceuticals] have increasingly contaminated drinking water sources like surfaceor groundwater, jeopardizing the safe provision of potable water. Due to the lack of appropriate technology, continuous water surveillance is yet not feasible and while biological early warning systems have shown p...

In this special issue about biofactors causing cognitive impairment, we present evidence for and discuss two such biofactors. One is excess copper, causing neuronal toxicity. The other is zinc deficiency, causing neuronal damage. We present evidence that Alzheimer's disease (AD) has become an epidemic in developed, but not undeveloped, countries and that the epidemic is a new disease phenomenon...

Bacteria are thought to avoid using the essential metal ion copper in their cytosol due to its toxicity. Herein we characterize Csp3, the cytosolic member of a new family of bacterial copper storage proteins from Methylosinus trichosporium OB3b and Bacillus subtilis. These tetrameric proteins possess a large number of Cys residues that point into the cores of their four-helix bundle monomers. T...

The toxicity of mixtures of copper, zinc, and diazinon were determined for Ceriodaphnia dubia using 7-d survival and reproduction tests. Fifteen treatments, including combinations of the chemicals at 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100% of their individual median lethal concentrations, adding up to one toxic unit (TU) were tested. The TU was then used to classify each mixture response as additive, greater t...

Pollution represents one of the main causes inducing modifications of the structures and physical functions of the aquatic ecosystems. The toxic substances harmful action works upon the living material, first at the individual level, and then, like a chain reaction, at the other levels: species and biocoenosis. The toxicity of a chemical substance varies very much from a species to another and ...