Nanoplastics Cause Neurobehavioral Impairments, Reproductive and Oxidative Damages, and Biomarker Responses in Zebrafish: Throwing up Alarms of Wide Spread Health Risk of Exposure

Abstract

Plastic pollution is a growing global emergency and it could serve as a geological indicator of the Anthropocene era. Microplastics are potentially more hazardous than macroplastics, as the former can permeate biological membranes. The toxicity of microplastic exposure on humans and aquatic organisms has been documented, but the toxicity and behavioral changes of nanoplastics (NPs) in mammals are scarce. In spite of their small size, nanoplastics have an enormous surface area, which bears the potential to bind even bigger amounts of toxic compounds in comparison to microplastics. Here, we used polystyrene nanoplastics (PS-NPs) (diameter size at ~70 nm) to investigate the neurobehavioral alterations, tissue distribution, accumulation, and specific health risk of nanoplastics in adult zebrafish. The results demonstrated that PS-NPs accumulated in gonads, intestine, liver, and brain with a tissue distribution pattern that was greatly dependent on the size and shape of the NPs particle. Importantly, an analysis of multiple behavior endpoints and different biochemical biomarkers evidenced that PS-NPs exposure induced disturbance of lipid and energy metabolism as well as oxidative stress and tissue accumulation. Pronounced behavior alterations in their locomotion activity, aggressiveness, shoal formation, and predator avoidance behavior were exhibited by the high concentration of the PS-NPs group, along with the dysregulated circadian rhythm locomotion activity after its chronic exposure. Moreover, several important neurotransmitter biomarkers for neurotoxicity investigation were significantly altered after one week of PS-NPs exposure and these significant changes may indicate the potential toxicity from PS-NPs exposure. In addition, after ~1-month incubation, the fluorescence spectroscopy results revealed the accumulation and distribution of PS-NPs across zebrafish tissues, especially in gonads, which would possibly further affect fish reproductive function. Overall, our results provided new evidence for the adverse consequences of PS-NPs-induced behavioral dysregulation and changes at the molecular level that eventually reduce the survival fitness of zebrafish in the ecosystem.

Which Zebrafish Strains Are More Suitable to Perform Behavioral Studies? A Comprehensive Comparison by Phenomic Approach

“…In the TL, this phenomenon may be related to their lower cortisol levels and expression levels of the stress-axis related genes than the AB fish after the learning task, as mentioned in the previous study [20]. As it is already well known, serotonin, a steroid hormone, is secreted by the teleost fish adrenal system in response to acute and chronic stress and different levels of cortisol might contribute to the different behavior observed in this study [51]. In addition, another prior experiment observed the difference in the baseline activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal (HPI) axis between the AB and TL larvae [52].…”

Platform to study intracellular polystyrene nanoplastic pollution and clinical outcomes

“…For instance, after exposure of hiPSCs to PSNPs, HiPathia points to altered peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptors pathway (Supplemental Results), which plays an important role in lipid metabolism 30 . The disturbance of lipid metabolism after exposure to PSNPs was demonstrated in Daphnia species 31 and zebrafish 32 using biochemical biomarkers. However, with our platform, we were able to identify several altered circuits and to predict the clinical outcome including APOC3 (supplemental online Figure 5) which causes hyperalphalipoproteinemia and increases the risk for ischemic cardiovascular disease 33 …”

Multifunctional Periphytic Biofilms: Polyethylene Degradation and Cd2+ and Pb2+ Bioremediation under High Methane Scenario

“…A report on plastic pollution speculated that, in 2050, there will be more plastic in the marine ecosystem than fish [ 22 ]. This plastic ultimately finds its way into the natural food web, accumulating in fishes and other invertebrates [ 23 , 24 ]. Muenmee et al [ 25 ] found that methanotrophs are the principal plastic decomposers in the upper zone of a lysimeter, and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic had the highest decay rate (k), whereas low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic had the lowest decay rate kinetics (k).…”