A study on biosorption and biodegradation of tributyltin by two red tide microalgae

The biosorption and biodegradation of tributyltin ( TBT ) at sublethal concentration of the two microalgae Leptocylindrus danicus and Amphidinium carterae were investigated. The results showed that accumulation of TBT occurred in the two algae, the adsorption of TBT by the algal cell wall was a rapid process. The degraded products, dibutyltin (DBT) and monobutyltin (MBT), were not detected in the incubation medium during the exposure periods of 9 days. Both algae have internal mechanism for degrading TBT to the less toxic fraction DBT, and also for DBT to MBT. It is worth noting that the Intracellular concentration of MBT was higher than that of DBT for Amphidinium carterae, which indicated that Amphidinium carterae could transformed DBT to MBT in a quick way relatively.