Artemia species: An important tool to screen general toxicity samples

Medicinal plants are a good source of novel therapeutic drugs, due to the phytochemicals present. Artemia, commonly known as brine shrimp, is a tiny halophilic invertebrate belonging to class Crustacean, which plays an important role in saline aquatic and marine eco-systems. Besides its usage in aquaculture, it is also highly valued for its application in toxicity detection and it is used in areas such as Ecology, Physiology, Ecotoxi-cology, Aquaculture and Genetics. Furthermore, Artemia based lethality assay (brine shrimp lethality assay, BSLA) is rapid, convenient and low cost. Presently, brine shrimp lethality assays are enormously employed in research and applied toxicology. It has been used in the study of natural products as a preliminary toxicity assay to screen a large number of extracts and compounds for drug discovery in medicinal plants. The aim of this review paper is to collect, organize, select and discuss the existing knowledge about the different uses of Artemia salina as a bench-top bioassay for the discovery and purification of bioactive natural products.