Identifying the metabolic perturbations in earthworm induced by cypermethrin using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry based metabolomics

Globally, cypermethrin is one of the most widely used synthetic pyrethroid for agricultural and domestic purposes. Most part of the pesticides used in the agriculture ends up as residues in the soil, making soil dwelling organisms, especially earthworms more susceptible to pesticide intoxication. Cypermethrin is known to be a neurotoxicant to many model organisms, including mammals and insects, but such type of toxicity evidence is not available for invertebrate systems like earthworms. In the present work, metabolomics based approach was utilized to identify the toxic mechanism of action of cypermethrin on earthworm (Metaphire posthuma) and these were exposed to sub-lethal concentrations of cypermethrin such as 2.5 mg/kg, 5 mg/kg, 10 mg/kg and 20 mg/kg (1/40th, 1/20th, 1/10th and 1/5th of LC50, respectively) for fourteen days. The results revealed that 22 metabolites (mainly fatty acids, sugars and amino acids) were shown significant responses in the exposed earthworms and these responses are dose dependent. It is proposed that mainly carbohydrate and fatty acids in neural system metabolism was disturbed. Overall, the results provided that metabolomics can be an effective tool to understand the effects of cypermethrin on the metabolic responses of earthworm Metaphire posthuma.