Short-term exposure to polystyrene microplastics hampers the cellular function of gills in the Mediterranean mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis

The odd couple: Caffeine and microplastics. Morphological and physiological changes in Mytilus galloprovincialis

“…Being stained by Masson trichrome with aniline blue, the chitinous rod is made up of connective tissue, and its break could be related to mechanical damage of MPs since it has been demonstrated that they can reach this anatomical district (Von Moos et al, 2012). The hemocyte infiltration could be caused not only by the break of the chitinous rod but also as a response of defense from pollutants, indeed it is caused also by caffeine as demonstrated by our results and other experimentation (De Marco, Afsa, Galati, Billè, & Parrino, 2022;De Marco, Afsa, Galati, Guerriero, et al, 2022) and it is also provoked by other pollutants (De Marco et al, 2023;Speciale et al, 2018). Another defense mechanism could be the hemocytic aggregation in the gill filament after caffeine exposure which impairs hemolymph flow inside the filament.…”

“…For all the reasons mentioned above, in the present study, we investigate the effect that caffeine and MPs, alone and combined, exert on the gill of M. galloprovincialis. The study is based on the premise that gills accumulate caffeine, MPs, and other pollutants in their tissue, according to what is reported in the current scientific literature (Afsa et al, 2023;Capolupo et al, 2016, Cole et al, 2020De Marco et al, 2023). Consequently, the primary focus was on assessing the impact of the already demonstrated occurrence of MPs and caffeine in gills rather than directly measuring the presence itself.…”

The Effects of Tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) on the Mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis: A Multi-Biomarker Approach

“…The rise in AChE activities was associated with ROS and apoptosis [71], which is consistent with our results in mussels exposed to the highest TBBPA concentration. Interestingly, some studies reported increased AChE activity and lipid peroxidation in fish containing microplastics, which authors attributed to the disruption of vesicles containing acetylcholine [72,73].…”

Polystyrene Micro- and Nanoplastics (PS MNPs): A Review of Recent Advances in the Use of -Omics in PS MNP Toxicity Studies on Aquatic Organisms

“…On the contrary, MS is a highly sensitive technique able to detect thousands of metabolites, prior to separation using liquid or gas chromatography (LC or GC, respectively) [102]. Overall, both of the two metabolomics platforms, in combination with powerful chemometric software for multivariate data analysis, which is necessary to deconvolute the huge amount of data produced following a metabolomic experiment [100,103], allow the simultaneous determination and comparison of a wide range of metabolites, offering numerous advantages to clarify the organism-environment interactions [35,36,43,[104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113]. A description of the effects of PS MNPs at metabolomic level in fishes and aquatic invertebrates is reported in Table 3.…”

“…Up to now, polystyrene (PS) ha sbeen chosen as a proxy for MNPs due to the fact that it is one of the most largely used non-biodegradable plastics worldwide and, unlike other polymers, it shows a greater stability in sea water suspension with low styrene release [17]. Several studies have been conducted to evaluate the lethal and sublethal effects of PS MNPs on aquatic biota, reporting fertility, growth, and reproduction abnormalities [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], as well as metabolism disorders, oxidative stress, and immune and nervous system dysfunction [13,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. Consequently, one of the main challenges today is to understand the mechanism of the toxicity of MNPs correlated to the lethal/sublethal effects studied so far.…”