Proteomics, ecotoxicology and seafood safety: theMytilus galloprovincialisin Sardinia

As a consequence for the irrational exploiting of marine resources, their contamination produced by the persistent anthropogenic activity and the effects of climate changes, nowadays there is great concern about the environmental sustainability of aquaculture practices and seafood quality. Actual regulations ensure that environmental and food resources are exploited in a rational way and that, accordingly, the hazards are adequately monitored both at environmental and food chain level.Proteomics allows the identification of biomarkers on many biological matrices for a wide range of general applications in ecotoxicity and food science. In the present work a proteomic approach has adopted for the study of the musselMytilus galloprovincialis, which is the most important aquaculture resource of Sardinia, in different rearing environments, with the aim of accomplishing a systematic characterization of its foot muscle proteome, gathering insights on the protein expression variability that may be correlated to growth and environmental factors. Lastly, also the application of proteomics in the development of biosensors to monitor toxicant hazards in aquatic environments and control seafood-related risks has been reviewed.