The ubiquitous carbonic anhydrase (CA) plays an important role in the physiology of animals and is one of the most studied enzymes. Previous studies evaluated the potential of its use as new biomarker in biomonitoring programmes. This study aims to investigate the relationship between CA and heavy metals more deeply. Therefore, Cu was used a reference toxicant and CA activity was tested in vitro and in vivo using the sentinel organism Mytilus galloprovincialis. Parallel lysosomal activation as another physiological response to metal exposure was analysed to demonstrate if there is a functional coupling among CA and lysosomes. The results were compared with earlier findings to better understand and further characterize the response of CA activity to heavy metal exposure. CA sensitivity showed interesting differences in both in vitro and in vivo tests. Hence, this work shows once more how variable CA activity is regarding its tissue and metal specificity and these observations provide necessary information and add important knowledge for a successful implementation of CA as novel biomarker.
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