Effects of nanomaterials on marine invertebrates

Abstract

The development of nanotechnology will inevitably lead to the release of consistent amounts of nanomaterials (NMs) and nanoparticles (NPs) into marine ecosystems. Ecotoxicological studies have been carried out to identify potential biological targets of NPs, and suitable models for predicting their impact on the health of the marine environment. Recent studies in invertebrates mainly focused on NP accumulation and sub-lethal effects, rather than acute toxicity. Among marine invertebrates, bivalves represent by large the most studied group, with polychaetes and echinoderms also emerging as significant targets of NPs. However, major scientific gaps still need to be filled. In this work, factors affecting the fate of NPs in the marine environment, and their consequent uptake/accumulation/toxicity in marine invertebrates will be summarized. The results show that in different model species, NP accumulation mainly occurs in digestive tract and gills. Data on sub-lethal effects and modes of action of different types of NPs (mainly metal oxides and metal based NPs) in marine invertebrates will be reviewed, in particular on immune function, oxidative stress and embryo development. Moreover, the possibility that such effects may be influenced by NP interactions with biomolecules in both external and internal environment will be introduced. In natural environmental media, NP interactions with polysaccharides, proteins and colloids may affect their agglomeration/aggregation and consequent bioavailability. Moreover, once within the organism, NPs are known to interact with plasma proteins, forming a protein corona that can affect particle uptake and toxicity in target cells in a physiological environment. These interactions, leading to the formation of eco-bio-coronas, may be crucial in determining particle behavior and effects also in marine biota. In order to classify NPs into groups and predict the implications of their release into the marine environment, information on their intrinsic properties is clearly insufficient, and a deeper understanding of NP eco/bio-interactions is required.

Impact of exposure time, particle size and uptake pathway on silver nanoparticle effects on circulating immune cells in mytilus galloprovincialis

“…As a result, predicted environmental concentrations for AgNP are often set at a level of % 0.01 lg/L (Tiede et al 2009;Katsumiti et al 2015). Even so, levels much lower than that have commonly been used in aquatic species ecotoxicity tests (1-100 lg/L) (Tiede et al 2009;Canesi & Corsi 2016), including those with mollusk models.…”

“…Internalization of these NP subsequently impacted on morphologic/functional characteristics including immune responses (Canesi et al 2008(Canesi et al , 2010a(Canesi et al , b, 2012Katsumiti et al 2015;Marisa et al 2016). Various mussel hemocyte parameters, including total hemocyte count (THC), differential hemocyte count (DHC), hemocyte viability, phagocytic activity and lysosomal membrane stability, have been used as a tool for screening of immunomodulatory effects of differing NP (Matozzo et al 2007;Parisi et al 2008;Hoher et al 2013;Matozzo & Bailo 2015;Canesi & Corsi, 2016;Marisa et al 2016). Specifically, hyalinocytes and granulocytes have been assessed for morphological changes among hemocytes in Mytilus galloprovincialis (Pipe et al 1997;Chang et al 2005;Garcia-Garcia et al 2008).…”

Hemocyte responses of the thick shell mussel Mytilus coruscus exposed to nano-TiO 2 and seawater acidification

“…NPs have been widely applied in various areas, including the production of more than 1800 consumer products (Bour et al, 2015;Nel et al, 2006) and hence they inevitably enter the aquatic environment (Hall et al, 2009;Menard et al, 2011). In recent years, the toxicity and safety of NPs have become closely reviewed issues in the field of ecotoxicology, but toxic mechanisms of various NPs have not been understood comprehensively to date (Canesi and Corsi, 2016).…”

“…An increasing number of toxicological researches have reported the toxic effects of NPs on marine invertebrates (Jiang et al, 2008;Canesi and Corsi, 2016). For example, Canesi et al (2010) found that nanoscale titanium dioxide (nano-TiO 2 ) induced toxic effects on the mussel M. galloprovincialis at 1-10 mg L −1 concentration.…”

“…The extensive applications of nano-TiO 2 will lead to an increased environmental concentration of titanium (Hall et al, 2009) that poses a potential risk to aquatic organisms (Kaegi et al, 2008). The ecotoxicity of nano-TiO 2 has been considered a topic of interest and is studied in various aquatic organisms, including algae, fish, and invertebrates (Cattaneo et al, 2009;Menard et al, 2011;Canesi and Corsi, 2016). To date, a multitude of toxicological studies on nano-TiO 2 have been reported in freshwater species (Kumar et al, 2012), whereas less information is available regarding marine species, such as bivalves (Menard et al, 2011).…”