Molecular Biomarkers as Key Factors to Evaluate the Extent of Industrial Pollution Exposure

Over recent decades, environmental pollution is rapidly increasing because of the anthropogenic activities of uncontrolled development, for example, industry, transport, agriculture, and urbanization, which generates harmful contaminants for living organisms including humans. These contaminants get accumulated in the organism via different routes and get bioaccumulated in different tissues exerting detrimental effects at different levels (molecular, cellular and physiological levels). The measurement of biological assays in sentinel species to access quality and changes of the environment is known as environmental biomonitoring which provides an indication of environmental stress. Several biomarkers evaluate the nature and extent of the exposure and evaluation of adverse biological responses to pollutants in a biomonitoring program of the aquatic environment. These include behavioral response, genotoxicity (comet assay and micronucleus assay) and oxidative stress. Here we present the importance of these biomarkers.