Effect of the Albumin Corona on the Toxicity of Combined Graphene Oxide and Cadmium to Daphnia magna and Integration of the Datasets into the NanoCommons Knowledge Base

Abstract

In this work, we evaluated the effect of protein corona formation on graphene oxide (GO) mixture toxicity testing (i.e., co-exposure) using the Daphnia magna model and assessing acute toxicity determined as immobilisation. Cadmium (Cd2+) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) were selected as co-pollutant and protein model system, respectively. Albumin corona formation on GO dramatically increased its colloidal stability (ca. 60%) and Cd2+ adsorption capacity (ca. 4.5 times) in reconstituted water (Daphnia medium). The acute toxicity values (48 h-EC50) observed were 0.18 mg L−1 for Cd2+-only and 0.29 and 0.61 mg L−1 following co-exposure of Cd2+ with GO and BSA@GO materials, respectively, at a fixed non-toxic concentration of 1.0 mg L−1. After coronation of GO with BSA, a reduction in cadmium toxicity of 110 % and 238% was achieved when compared to bare GO and Cd2+-only, respectively. Integration of datasets associated with graphene-based materials, heavy metals and mixture toxicity is essential to enable re-use of the data and facilitate nanoinformatics approaches for design of safer nanomaterials for water quality monitoring and remediation technologies. Hence, all data from this work were annotated and integrated into the NanoCommons Knowledge Base, connecting the experimental data to nanoinformatics platforms under the FAIR data principles and making them interoperable with similar datasets.

Promising Graphene-Based Nanomaterials and Their Biomedical Applications and Potential Risks: A Comprehensive Review

“…Therefore, we should have a more comprehensive understanding of the potential risk factors of GBNs, which warrants prior in-depth medical research. The potential risks of GBNs can be classified into biomedical toxicity (as cytotoxicity, in vitro genotoxicity, and nanoparticle–protein adsorption, thrombosis, platelet aggregation, and in vivo hemolytic toxicity) ,− and the impact on the ecological environment, such as toxicity caused by nonbiomedical products through environmental and occupational exposure . In this section, we discuss the potential risks of GBNs from cellular, body, and environmental perspectives (Table and Figures and ) and expound on several mechanisms to decrease toxicity.…”

Recent Advances in Immunosafety and Nanoinformatics of Two-Dimensional Materials Applied to Nano-imaging

“…Allied with quality data infrastructure and processing, computational methods are sizeable to deal with complexity of nano-bio interface to assess and model the toxicity of nanomaterials in a variety of environments (163,(191)(192)(193)(194). To support safe-by-design approaches, international efforts have been made to provide data integration and sharing, modeling tools, standard protocols, and ontologies, to ensure Findable, Accessible, Interoperate, and Reusable (FAIR) data (195,196). For example, European projects, such as NanosolveIT and NanoCommons, and more recently CompSafeNano are initiatives facing on this direction (164,165,197,198).…”

Methods, models, mechanisms and metadata: Introducing the Nanotoxicology collection at F1000Research

“…Progress towards single cell-level evaluations of accumulation of nanomaterials and analysis of heterogeneity of responses is also an important emerging direction 6 . Mixture toxicity studies with nanomaterials and co-pollutants, including understanding the role of molecular interactions with the acquired biomolecule corona 7 , are very welcome also, as the nanotoxicology community is providing leadership in this emerging topic.…”