Deep learning-assisted detection of psychoactive water pollutants using behavioral profiling of zebrafish embryos.

Journal: Journal of hazardous materials
PMID:

Abstract

Water pollution poses a significant risk to the environment and human health, necessitating the development of innovative detection methods. In this study, a series of representative psychoactive compounds were selected as model pollutants, and a new approach combining zebrafish embryo behavioral phenotyping with deep learning was used to identify and classify water pollutants. Zebrafish embryos were exposed to 17 psychoactive compounds at environmentally relevant concentrations (1 and 10 μg/L), and their locomotor behavior was recorded at 5 and 6 days post-fertilization (dpf). We constructed six distinct zebrafish locomotor track datasets encompassing various observation times and developmental stages and evaluated multiple deep learning models on these datasets. The results demonstrated that the ResNet101 model performed optimally on the 1-min track dataset at 6 dpf, achieving an accuracy of 65.35 %. Interpretability analyses revealed that the model effectively focused on the relevant locomotor track features for classification. These findings suggest that the integration of zebrafish embryo behavioral analysis with deep learning can serve as an environmentally friendly and economical method for detecting water pollutants. This approach offers a new perspective for water quality monitoring and has the potential to assist existing chemical analytical techniques in detection, thereby advancing environmental toxicology research and water pollution control efforts.

Authors

  • Ya Zhu
    School of Public health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, China; School of Medicine, Taizhou University, Taizhou 318000, China.
  • Lan Li
    Department of Otolaryngology, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, China.
  • Shaokui Yi
    School of Life Sciences, Huzhou University, Huzhou 313000, China.
  • Rui Hu
    School of Automation and Artificial Intelligence, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China.
  • Jianjun Wu
    College of Information Technology and Communication, Hexi University, Zhangye 734000, China.
  • Jinqian Xu
    School of Public health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, China.
  • Junguang Xu
    School of Public health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, China.
  • Qinnan Zhu
    School of Public health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, China.
  • Shijia Cen
    School of Medicine, Taizhou University, Taizhou 318000, China.
  • Yuxuan Yuan
    School of Medicine, Taizhou University, Taizhou 318000, China.
  • Da Sun
    National & Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Ecological Treatment Technology of Urban Water Pollution, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou 325035, China.
  • Waqas Ahmad
    Department of Information Systems and Technology, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden.
  • Huilan Zhang
    School of Medicine, Taizhou University, Taizhou 318000, China.
  • Xuan Cao
    , Santa Clara, CA, USA.
  • Jingjuan Ju
    School of Public health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, China; Wenzhou Municipal Key Laboratory of Neurodevelopmental Pathology and Physiology, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, China. Electronic address: jjj0810@wmu.edu.cn.