Aurora Neagoe

University of Bucharest | Unibuc · Research Centre for Ecological Services

Lupinus species have been sporadically reported to be colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). The interactions between AMF and lupine plants could also be non-symbiotic, from positive to negative, as controlled by the stress conditions of the plant. The goal of the study was to reveal the existence of such positive interactions and provide...

The idea of linking stressors, services providing units (SPUs), and ecosystem services (ES) is ubiquitous in the literature, although is currently not applied in areas contaminated with heavy metals (HMs), This integrative literature review introduces the general form of a deterministic conceptual model of the cross-scale effect of HMs on biogeoche...

Smelters contaminate grasslands over large areas, leading to a decrease in ecosystem services. We analyzed the concentrations of elements and the values of other potential control variables in soil and plants (26 species) from 156 locations distributed over contamination and altitude gradients in a small polluted catchment. The regression analysis...

Wet deposition is influencing air quality because air pollutants are washed away from the surrounding air. Consequently, particulate matter and associated compounds are transported in the rainwater and enter into soil, surface waters, and groundwater. Nonpoint sources of heavy metals from stormwater runoff have increased in urban areas due to indus...

PC2 MODSPA-NUTRITOX se încadrează în programul de cercetare pe termen lung inițiat în 2007 de UB, ICPA, IBB și ISMMA Prin PC2 a avut loc extinderea programului către procese de interfață relevante pentru evapotranspirație Mobilizarea partenerilor s-a făcut prin formularea unor ținte mai ambițioase decât cele contractate Au fost realizate toate livr...

Noi, profesorii și studenții școlii de vară INTER-ASPA “Radu Lăcătușu”, afirmăm că valorile noastre științifice sunt căutarea adevărului, rigoarea metodologică, meritul științific, modestia epistemică și responsabilitatea morală. Noi credem într-o comunitate colegială, în care tinerii sunt ucenici ai celor mai în vârstă, în care seniorii se respect...

Școala se aliniază obiectivelor Planului Național de Redresare și Reziliență oferind un model de responsabilitate și bune practici care va avea un impact pozitiv asupra rezilienței sistemului de cercetare, dezvoltare și inovare. Școala de vară INTER-ASPA din iulie 2021 are ca scop stimularea maturizării organizaționale în etapa de cercetare a inovă...

The problem we started with was how to model the effects of heavy metals on the role of plants in the production of ecosystem services, in particular of erosion control in small catchments. We started from simple bioaccumulation models (2009-2011), then developed a research line from 2012 to 2021 consisting in three projects: “Accounting for the se...

This remediation guide is a first draft that can serve to both students and researchers for interdisciplinary work. What is specific to our approach is the explicit inclusion of multiscale experimental methodology (from pot to field plot), and an up-scaling procedure from field plots to ecosystem scale. The document is structured in four chapters,...

The institutional objective of INTER-ASPA project is the consolidation of research groups with high potential within an innovation ecosystem. Part of this process consists in the creation and adoption of management procedures in order to increase the scientific output in terms of data and knowledge. Here we report the first version of a “Procedure...

In the autumn 2017 we have launched “The structure of a transdisciplinary research consortium for bio-geo-interactions research and integrated river basin management” (Lăcătușu et al. 2017). We have targeted in partnerships since 2007 the trans-disciplinary topic of river basin management under the pressure of pollutants and climate changes at diff...

The objectives of the paper are to test if the nitrogen (mineral and organic), phosphorous and potassium fertilizers commonly used in field crops penetrate deep into the soils, and find out their leaching characteristics in the case of different-textured soils, in order to assess the potential environmental risk and recommend measures for limiting...

Riparian vegetation provides a wide range of ecosystem services including water quality regulation, flooding avoidance, and the natural control of stream temperatures. Changes in land use and the increase of anthropogenic activities in the proximity of rivers affect the growth and development of riparian buffers. The aim of the work was to assess t...

In this paper we present a project and its preliminary results after one year of research. The project aims to implement in Romania the research directions recently identified at European level within the concerted action AROMIS (Assessment and Reduction of heavy metal input into agro-ecosystems). The objectives of the project are: 1) the assessmen...

An anthropic ecosystem from Romania was investigated from acarological, vegetation and chemical point of view. The community structures of two groups of mites were studied (Acari: Mesostigmata, Oribatida) from a tailing pond, using transect method, in correlation with concentrations of heavy metals (As, Cu, Pb, Ni, Mn and Zn), with abiotic factors...

The data set consists in a file with two sheets: one includes a matrix of 297 rows and 46 columns, and the second one a matrix of 12 rows and 24 columns. In the first sheet each row is a replicate of an experimental variant with Agrostis capillaris growing on tailing substrate belonging to three experiments witch have the same variants, but are org...

Phytostabilisation projects for tailing dams depend on processes occurring at spatial scales of 106 m2 and at decadal time scales. Most experiments supporting the design and monitoring of such projects have much smaller spatial and time scales. Usually, they are only designed for one single scale. Here, we report the results of three coupled experi...

The various applications of Ag(I) generated the necessity to obtain Ag(I)-accumulating organisms for the removal of surplus Ag(I) from contaminated sites or for the concentration of Ag(I) from Ag(I)-poor environments. In this study we obtained Ag(I)-accumulating cells by expressing plant metallothioneins (MTs) in the model Saccharomyces cerevisiae....

Ontologies are theories about existing entities and can be general, of philosophical interest, and regional, accounting for specific epistemic fields. Developing regional scientific and / or management ontologies is a growing research field in biology, ecology and socio-ecological research. We propose an ontology accounting for 1) the integrating m...

Introducere: În bazinele hidrografice cu activități miniere în timpul inundațiilor o parte fluxul de sedimente poluate este reținut în lunca inundabilă. Din considerente geomorfologice și hidrologice este posibil să apară zone intens poluate și la distanță relativ mare de sursă. Obiectivul cercetării raportate aici a fost compararea caracteristicil...

Seven institutional partners from four Romanian development regions joined in a consortium focused on the sustainable administration of water resources, river basins and wetlands. The goal of INTER-ASPA project is to create an innovation environment able to support over multiple strategic cycles the disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and trans-discip...

The project had three objectives: Objective 1 To produce cost-effective tools for the evaluation of metals’ stocks and their mineralogical forms in tailing dams, Objective 2 To produce effective tools for the remediation of tailing dams, Objective 3 To develop innovative environmental services for the design of coupled monitoring systems and couple...

Accumulation of heavy metals without developing toxicity symptoms is a phenotype restricted to a small group of plants called hyperaccumulators, whose metal-related characteristics suggested the high potential in biotechnologies such as bioremediation and bioextraction. In an attempt to extrapolate the heavy metal hyperaccumulating phenotype to yea...

Introducere: O tehnică de îmbunătățire a fitostabilizării face apel la inoculurarea substratului de pe iazuri cu fungi micorizali. Obiectivul cercetării a fost să caracterizăm efectul procentului de fungi micorizali cu care s-a făcut inocularea substratului asupra concentrației de pigmenți asimilatori și gradului de peroxidare a lipidelor din plant...

In this study we engineered yeast cells armed for heavy metal accumulation by targeting plant metallothioneins to the inner face of the yeast plasma membrane. Metallothioneins (MTs) are cysteine-rich proteins involved in the buffering of excess metal ions, especially Cu(I), Zn(II) or Cd(II). The cDNAs of seven Arabidopsis thaliana MTs (AtMT1a, AtMT...

Primers used to clone plant metallothionein cDNAs. The primers were used to amplify plant MTs cDNAs from Arabidopsis thaliana (At) or Noccaea caerulescens (Nc) cDNAs. The MT gene CUP1 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Sc) is intronless and was amplified from genomic DNA. The primers used introduced restriction sites suitable for subsequent subcloning...

Amino acid sequence of the chimeric metallothioneins (myrGFP-MTx) expressed in yeast cells. (DOCX)

Primers used to verify the transcription of the transgenic myrGFP::MT in yeast cells by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR). The forward primer (universal) overlapped nucleotides 8–27 of myrGFP fragment, while the reverse primer complemented the fragment 48–67 of each fused MT cDNA. (DOCX)

Multiple amino acid sequence alignments of metallothioneins cloned for expression in yeast (sequence names with _X; the first methionine has been removed) and their reference protein sequences. A. ScCUP1 (P0CX80), metallothionein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. B. Subfamily 1 of Arabidopsis thaliana Col-0 metallothioneins AtMT1a (P43392) and AtMT1c...

Effect of metal exposure on the viability of myrGFP-MT-expressing cells. Early log phase growing cells transformed with pGRD-myrGFP::MTx series were shifted to SGal-Ura for transgene induction. Four hours after the galactose shift, MeCl2 was added at the indicated concentration and samples were harvested for viability assay by methylene blue staini...

Several studies have shown that hairy roots (HRs) can increase the phytoextraction of organic and inorganic pollutants. In addition, microorganisms colonizing the rhizosphere of hairy roots have demonstrated the efficacy of HRs either in removing or in stabilizing of pollutants. This growth chamber study aimed to determine the effect of colonizatio...

We investigated two Romanian industrial regions- Copşa Mică and Zlatna, to assess the current situation of soil pollution and bioaccumulation of Pb, Cd, Cu and Zn in different vegetable species and possible risks to consumers. Both total and mobile forms of the metals were determined in soil samples, and metal content in the edible parts of root ve...

Using fungi inoculation coupled with phyto-remediation on tailing dams in the quantities recommended by agricultural practices is cost prohibitive. In previous study we obtained better results with 1% fungi than with 7% fungi due to the negative effect associated to the expanded clay (support for fungi spores) in the particular conditions of the ta...

It is well known that changing the vegetation cover by bioremediation leads to changes in runoff and erosion intensity. However, this relation is not easy to be quantified. One possibility is to have direct measurements in the field using large experimental plots. The weakness of this approach is the lack of generality. At the other extreme another...

Producing large geo-referenced data sets for characterizing environmental variables is a major objective of the current national research programs. In Romania such public raw data sets are practically absent. In the framework of one past and two ongoing research projects we adopted a framework focusing the production of such data on coupled enviro...

Lanthanides are a group of non-essential elements with important imaging and therapeutic applications. Although trivalent lanthanide ions (Ln3+) are used as potent blockers of Ca2+ channels, the systematic studies correlating Ln3+ accumulation and toxicity to Ca2+ channel blocking activity are scarce. In this study, we made use of the eukaryotic mo...

In the Transylvanian region, the Arie Valley stretches along the course of the Arie River, ending as tributary of Mure River. As well as these areas of great biodiversity value, the Arie Valley (drainage area of 2,540 km 2) also crosses the region where local people set their villages and towns and use the surrounding areas as grasslands for grazin...

The Romanian Government adopted in august 2015 the national strategy and the national plan for the management of contaminated sites. The total costs for risk assessment and rehabilitation of these sites is estimated to be about 8.5 billion euros. About 2.6 billion of there will be needed for the management of contaminated sites related to mining in...

The ecotoxicological effects in the field can be directly assessed by measuring the concentration of the pollutant in soil or plant samples, and also by measuring response variables such as biochemical ones. However, there are few such studies integrating data on pollutants and plant biochemical variables and there is a knowledge gap about how domi...

The influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi (Glomus intraradices) and of heavy metal stress on the characteristics of biomass production, as well as non-enzymatic and enzymatic variables in the roots, shoots and leaves of sunflower ( Helianthus annuus L.) plants were studied at pot and field scales. The intensity of the mycorrhizal colonizat...

A pot experiment was carried out to determine to what extent the N and P uptake into A. capillaris influence the accumulation of metals from contaminated soil supplied with these fertilizers. The experiment consisted of 80 polyethylene pots which were placed in turn into larger glass beakers without drainage holes. This prevents loss of any nutrien...

The grasslands around the smelter area Zlatna (Romania) have been strongly contaminated with Pb, Cu and Zn by atmospheric deposition. This has led to the destruction of the vegetation cover in some areas followed by erosion and transport of the contaminated top soil, while in other areas the interplay between plant resistance to toxic effects and g...

The involvement of Ca2+ in the response to high Mn2+, Co2+, Ni2+, Cu2+, Zn2+, Cd2+, and Hg2+ was investigated in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The yeast cells responded through a sharp increase in cytosolic Ca2+ when exposed to Cd2+, and to a lesser extent to Cu2+, but not to Mn2+, Co2+, Ni2+, Zn2+, or Hg2+. The response to high Cd2+ depended mainly on...

Blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum L.) are a rich source of antioxidants and their consumption is believed to contribute to food-related protection against oxidative stress. In the present study, the chemoprotective action of blueberry extracts against cadmium toxicity was investigated using a cadmium-hypersensitive strain of Saccharomyces cerevisia...

We performed an experiment at pot scale to assess the effect of plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) on the development of five plant species grown on a tailing dam substrate. None of the species even germinated on inoculated unamended tailing material, prompting use of compost amendment. The effect of inoculation on the amended material was to i...

Establishment of a vegetation cover on mine waste substrate is one of the crucial but also one of the most difficult parts of the remediation process. This study tests two different approaches to facilitate plant growth on toxic and oligotrophic substrates, i. e., the addition of coarse mineral particles and the inoculation with putative growth sup...

In the process of remediation of mine sites, the establishment of a vegetation cover is one of the most important tasks. This study tests two different approaches to manipulate soil properties in order to facilitate plant growth. Mine waste from Ingurtosu, Sardinia, Italy rich in silt, clay, and heavy metals like Cd, Cu, and Zn was used in a series...

Applied research programs in the remediation of contaminated areas can be used also for gaining insights in the physiological and ecological mechanisms supporting the resistance of plant communities in stress conditions due to toxic elements. The research hypothesis of this study was that in the heavily contaminated but nutrient-poor substrate of m...

The planetary importance of microbial function requires urgently that our knowledge and our exploitation ability is extended, therefore every occasion of bioprospecting is welcome. In this work, bioprospecting is presented from the perspective of the UMBRELLA project, whose main goal was to develop an integral approach for remediation of soil influ...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are integral functioning parts of plant root systems and are widely recognized for enhancing plant growth on severely disturbed sites, including those contaminated with heavy metals. However, the generality of detailed patterns observed for their influence on various metals and oxidative-stress parameters in multi...

In this chapter we introduce a concept relating the biogeochemical role of microorganisms explicitly to cross-scale effects in the frame of an approach we termed objective scale integrated biogeochemistry. By objective, we mean that the scale of analyses is that of the environmental objects involved in the cycling, and is not assumed a priori based...

In the process of remediation of mine sites, the establishment of a vegetation cover is one of the most important tasks. This study tests two different approaches to manipulate soil properties in order to facilitate plant growth. Mine waste from Ingurtosu/Sardinia/Italy rich in silt, clay and heavy metals like Cd, Cu and Zn was used in a series of...

This paper presents a laboratory experiment which aims to identify the main pollutants that appear to affect large areas of farmland around the aluminum plant in Slatina. After conducting a germination test using several species of plants, there were selected two of them, which developed more rigorously and produced a higher biomass. The experiment...

In this paper there are presented results from a laboratory experiment performed on a polluted agricultural soil. Three types of soil were used: unpolluted soil (as a reference), polluted soil and amended with expanded clay and polluted soil amended with expanded clay and inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi, in which there were inseminated two specie...

The concept of hazard in the current interpretation of the regulations is directed to local and short term effects and its assessment is based on the distribution in space of the concentration of contaminants in abiotic and biotic compartments. We criticize this concept and introduce a potential hazard with full space-time dimension, i.e. from shor...

We have applied a concept framework for scale-specific processes in order to characterize the role of the organic matter in the mobility of metals. At very small scale, we identified roles by immobilization of metals (immobilization in litter, immobilization in soil aggregates, dissolved organic carbon chelates in fine pores), by mobilization of me...

We performed a rational reconstruction of the relationship between biogeochemistry and the study of ecological productive systems. A structural and a functional possibility for building biogeochemical integrated models with optimal complexity have been identified. The conceptual framework was then applied to metals in contaminated areas. Metal mobi...

As environmental issues become more and more stringent, the biotechnological approaches to maintain clean environments are receiving increasing attention. Heavy metal pollution is of great concern as it ultimately forces heavy metals into the food chain leading to serious ecological and health problems. Removal of excess heavy metals from contamina...

Pho84p, the protein responsible for the high-affinity uptake and transport of inorganic phosphate across the plasma membrane, is also involved in the low-affinity uptake of heavy metals in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. In the present study, the effect of PHO84 overexpression upon the heavy metal accumulation by yeast cells was investigated. A...

After reviewing the limits of the current approaches, we introduce an analytical framework for up-scaling analyses of ecological processes. The framework attempts to produce a conceptual unification and leads to a ten-step approach for up-scaling from a source to a target scale. The literature on ectomycorrhizal fungi is then screened following eac...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AM) are integral functioning parts of plant root systems which are widely recognized in enhancing plant growth on severely disturbed sites, including those contaminated with heavy metals. They play also an important role in metal tolerance and accumulation, providing an attractive system to advance plant-based environm...

We investigated the structure of biological communities at ecosystem and landscape scale in four small catchments including in their structure contaminated areas resulted from mining and processing of heavy metals ores. The contaminated hot spots (ecosystems) were mining dumps, tailing dams and areas polluted by atmospheric deposition around a smel...

Controlling the metals pollution is not a matter of controlling only the areas directly polluted by the mining industry but also the areas where the metals have been transported by socioeconomic and natural mechanisms. The socio-ecological mechanisms are linked to the life cycle of the products containing metals, and the natural processes are relat...

Lysimeter experiments were performed in order to investigate the effects of two bioremediation methods on the export of metals from a former uranium mine site located near Ronneburg, Thuringia, Germany. The first method consisted of the application of topsoil and compost to contaminated soil. Soil was sampled from two amended plots and from an unam...

IntroductionPhysical and Chemical Properties, and Analytical Methods Sources, Production, Important Compounds, Uses, Waste Products, Recycling.Distribution in the Environment, in Foods, and in Living OrganismsUptake, Absorption, Transport and Distribution, Metabolism and Elimination in Plant, Animals, and HumansEffects on Plants, Animals and Humans...

A field experiment was carried out in order to assess the effect of urea, topsoil and municipal compost addition on plant performance and on the uptake of heavy metals by plants from contaminated soil. The experimental site was a disturbed soil in spite of remediation actions after several decades of uranium leaching (Eastern Thuringia, Germany) in...

In pot and field experiments conducted over several years, the influence of 2-aminoethanol on growth and yield of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) under conditions of different water supply was studied. Under drought stress, 2-aminoethanol pre-treatment increased the grain yield of barley by 5–30%. The effects of application of the plant constituent, 2-...

Effects of unfavourable environmental conditions (stresses) induce stressor specific and unspecific short- and long-term responses in plants. Long-term responses depend on intensity and duration of the stress. Short-term effects comprise the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), membrane damages by the oxidation of fatty acids, and the rel...

The present final scientific report is a summary of the research activities within the workpackages of the project partners covering the whole three year period of the EU-project RIPFOR. It presents the objectives, work and results archieved during its lifetime and reflects the collective efforts made by all partners. The problem of prevention wit...

In 1999 it was hypothesized that the pollution associated to the Yugoslavian conflict might lead to an upstream-downstream gradient of heavy metals concentrations in new deposited sediments in the Danube floodplain. Testing of the hypotheses was done in two steps: assessing the distribution in 1999, and checking the patterns of distribution in 2000...