Amino-modified polystyrene nanoparticles affect signalling pathways of the sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) embryos

Abstract

Polystyrene nanoparticles have been shown to pose serious risk to marine organisms including sea urchin embryos based on their surface properties and consequently behaviour in natural sea water. The aim of this study is to investigate the toxicity pathways of amino polystyrene nanoparticles (PS-NH, 50 nm) in Paracentrotus lividus embryos in terms of development and signalling at both protein and gene levels. Two sub-lethal concentrations of 3 and 4 μg/mL of PS-NH were used to expose sea urchin embryos in natural sea water (PS-NH as aggregates of 143 ± 5 nm). At 24 and 48 h post-fertilisation (hpf) embryonic development was monitored and variations in the levels of key proteins involved in stress response and development (Hsp70, Hsp60, MnSOD, Phospho-p38 Mapk) as well as the modulation of target genes (Pl-Hsp70, Pl-Hsp60, Pl-Cytochrome b, Pl-p38 Mapk, Pl-Caspase 8, Pl-Univin) were measured. At 48 hpf various striking teratogenic effects were observed such as the occurrence of cells/masses randomly distributed, severe skeletal defects and delayed development. At 24 hpf a significant up-regulation of Pl-Hsp70, Pl-p38 Mapk, Pl-Univin and Pl-Cas8 genes was found, while at 48 hpf only for Pl-Univin was observed. Protein profile showed different patterns as a significant increase of Hsp70 and Hsp60 only after 48 hpf compared to controls. Conversely, P-p38 Mapk protein significantly increased at 24 hpf and decreased at 48 hpf. Our findings highlight that PS-NH are able to disrupt sea urchin embryos development by modulating protein and gene profile providing new understandings into the signalling pathways involved.

Brood pouch-mediated polystyrene nanoparticle uptake during Daphnia magna embryogenesis

“…Both clutch and neonate body size are related to a general stress response that is also found for other contaminants, indicating the ecological relevance of the compound exposure. Likewise, in sea urchin embryos, amino PSNP (50 nm; 3 mg L À1 ) exposure disrupts development and induces teratogenic effects as well as stress genes and proteins (Della Torre et al 2014;Pinsino et al 2017). In addition, copepod nauplii can show clear ingestion of PSNPs, although dorsal imaging of the animals does not allow to distinguish between gut and oil sac serving as lipid storage.…”

Behavior and Bio-Interactions of Anthropogenic Particles in Marine Environment for a More Realistic Ecological Risk Assessment

“…Differently from plain and PS-COOH NPs, once suspended in NSW, positively charged PS NPs usually display a hydrodynamic size close to their nominal diameter (Wu et al, 2019). For example, different batches of PS-NH 2 NPs (50 nm) from the Bangs Laboratories Inc., kept an average hydrodynamic size ranging from 58 to 196 nm in different NSW media from the Mediterranean region (Della Torre et al, 2014;Bergami et al, 2016Bergami et al, , 2017Manfra et al, 2017;Pinsino et al, 2017;Marques-Santos et al, 2018;Grassi et al, 2019), thus showing no or slight agglomeration soon after dispersion. However, timeresolved DLS measurements revealed a strong agglomeration behavior of PS-NH 2 in NSW after 48 and 72 h, with large aggregates up to 5 µm, which were more prone to sedimentation (Varó et al, 2019).…”

Combined Effects of Diatom-Derived Oxylipins on the Sea Urchin Paracentrotus lividus

“…Fluorescence was measured using the ViiATM7 software (Applied Biosystems, Monza, Italy). The expression of each gene was analyzed and internally normalized against ubiquitin [29] and 18S rRNA [63,64] using REST software (Relative Expression Software Tool, Weihenstephan, Germany) on the basis of the Pfaffl method [65,66]. Relative expression ratios above 1.5 were considered significant (see Table S3).…”