biolutoxR: An R-Shiny package for easy performing data analysis of a toxicity test based on bacterial bioluminescence inhibition

Abstract

In the 21st century, in the context of an environmental crisis, chemical pollution has become a major global concern. In addition to chemical analysis, many bioassays have been developed and have proved to be interesting tools for considerably improve our understanding of the effects of human activities on species and ecosystems. Compared with animal or plant bioassays, bacterial bioassays based on bioluminescence inhibition have the advantage of being relatively economical and reproducible. This toxicity test uses the bioluminescent metabolic response of bacteria exposed for a short time to a solution of interest in the aim of assessing and quantifying its toxicity. Although routine tools are available to pre-process the data obtained, to our knowledge no flexible research tool is available for the data analysis following these tests, which could limit the access to the results for novices or experienced people unfamiliar with data processing software. To overcome this lack of tools for this bioassay, an R-Shiny package is proposed to generalise data analysis following a toxicity test based on bacterial bioluminescence inhibition. The traditional paper-based working environment is reproduced digitally in this package, which ultimately facilitates data entry and cleaning, makes the creation of relevant dynamic graphs, and simplifies access to toxicity data (e.g. dose-response curve and median effective concentration, i.e. EC50). The aim of this tool is to provide the target community with a high-performance tool that can be used to obtain toxicity test results based on the inhibition of bacterial bioluminescence.

Keywords

• Environmental pollution
• Chemicals
• Ecotoxicology
• Bioassay