Ecotoxicity tests on cellular level

Endocrine disrupting compounds among significant environmental pollutants. They are dangerous both for humans and other organisms by affect their hormonal system. They enter the environment during production, use and disposal some chemicals, but they may be of natural origin. The aim of this work is to give a brief overview of possible methods of determination of the presence of ecotoxic substances in the environment, using the in vitro toxicity assays. These tests use cell cultures instead of test organisms. The work describes principles of ecotoxicity tests at the cellular level, such as cell viability assays, cell proliferation assays, assays based on the metabolic activity of cells or DNA microarrays. A significant part of this work is focused on the possibilities of determination of endocrine disruptors by selected assays. They are ligand binding assays, reporter gene assays (recombinant yeast assay, mammalian-based reporter gene assays) and cell proliferation assay called E-screen. Significance and rationale use of tests to prove the endocrine activities in environmental matrice is given through examples of studies in which the tests were used