Reduced fecundity and cellular changes in Acheta domesticus after multigenerational exposure to graphene oxide nanoparticles in food

Assessment of reproductive and developmental effects of graphene oxide on Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes)

“…In Spodoptera frugiperda, the diet containing 1mg/g GO during larval rearing, reduced fecundity and fertility of the insects (Martins et al, 2019). In house cricket (Acheta domesticus) multigenerational exposure to GO reduced fecundity and induced cellular damage (Dziewiecka et al, 2018). Moreover, our data on Japanese medaka indicate that fecundity increased gradually with time even though it did not reach up to the same level observed during pre-injection periods (Figures 1A-B).…”

The Structure–Properties–Cytotoxicity Interplay: A Crucial Pathway to Determining Graphene Oxide Biocompatibility

“…Then, each type of GO was mixed with the ground food and given to animals during the cytotoxicity assessment. A detailed food preparation method and the food composition can be found elsewhere [26,27].…”

“…The samples were prepared in the same conditions and intentionally "coded" to focus on the physical-chemical-biological relationships rather than the material's origin. Based on our several years of experience with GO, we used the Acheta domesticus model organism with known physiology and reactions under stress conditions [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. The following hypotheses were verified to resolve the relationship between the chemical composition and morphology of GO samples and selected cytotoxicity markers at the cellular level:…”

Graphene and Reproduction: A Love-Hate Relationship

“…In this way, the Authors tried to decipher the long-term toxicity in house crickets by analyzing their reproductive capability after nourishing the insects with single-layered micrometric GO at concentrations of 20 and 200 µg/g of food over two generations. Their results showed a reduced fertility, based on the number of laid eggs per female and larvae hatching rates [59]. The same research group reported the effects derived from the use of much smaller nanodiamonds, similarly added to the animal's diet, finding similar effects but less severe and limited with respect to the GO of the exposed generation [42].…”

“…The majority of GO is synthesized by using the Hummer's method [46,47,[56][57][58] even though sometimes this information is omitted (overall in the case of commercial samples). However, the use of this synthetic methodology does not ensure a precise characterization of the final product that may differ in terms of exfoliation degree (single, SLGO, or few layered sheets, FLGO) [48], oxygen content (either in terms of C/O w/w, that may vary from 0.25 [59] to 0.39 [48] or as final oxygen weight with respect to the total weight, i.e., 20% [41] or >36% [60]), dimensions of the sheets (i.e., from 297 nm mean size [61] to 3-5 µm [41,47]), surface charge (i.e., from ζ -potential −14.13 ± 11.1 mV [60] to −56.7 ± 1.5 mV [46]). In a few studies GO sheets are named nano-GO (nanoGO or NGO) [62,63] or are distinguished in small GO (S-GO) and large GO (L-GO) [64] sheets when the protocol of preparation involves a further step of cutting into small pieces by sonication [64] or harsh oxidation conditions.…”