Abstract
Silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) have been widely used in biomedical and biotechnological applications. Environmental exposure to nanomaterials is inevitable as they become part of our daily life. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the possible toxic effects of SiNPs exposure. In this study, zebrafish embryos were treated with SiNPs (25, 50, 100, 200 µg/mL) during 4–96 hours post fertilization (hpf). Mortality, hatching rate, malformation and whole-embryo cellular death were detected. We also measured the larval behavior to analyze whether SiNPs had adverse effects on larvae locomotor activity. The results showed that as the exposure dosages increasing, the hatching rate of zebrafish embryos was decreased while the mortality and cell death were increased. Exposure to SiNPs caused embryonic malformations, including pericardial edema, yolk sac edema, tail and head malformation. The larval behavior testing showed that the total swimming distance was decreased in a dose-dependent manner. The lower dose (25 and 50 µg/mL SiNPs) produced substantial hyperactivity while the higher doses (100 and 200 µg/mL SiNPs) elicited remarkably hypoactivity in dark periods. In summary, our data indicated that SiNPs caused embryonic developmental toxicity, resulted in persistent effects on larval behavior.
Highlights
Silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) have been found extensive applications in biomedical and biotechnological fields, such as medical diagnostics, drug delivery, gene therapy, tracking and imaging in vivo [1,2,3,4](Li, 2012 #1)
One of the challenges in the field of nanotechnology is environmental health and safety (EHS), which is focusing on the consideration of the properties of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) that could pose hazards to the environment and human beings [8]
We reported for the first time that zebrafish exposure to SiNPs (25, 50, 100, 200 mg/mL) during 4–96 hpf embryonic period resulted in a persistent effects on larval behavior
Summary
Silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) have been found extensive applications in biomedical and biotechnological fields, such as medical diagnostics, drug delivery, gene therapy, tracking and imaging in vivo [1,2,3,4](Li, 2012 #1). Zebrafish is emerging as a correlative in vivo vertebrate model for nano EHS studies due to their lower husbandry cost, optical transparency and high degree of genomic homology to humans [9,10]. The zebrafish model has been reported for assessing of a wide array of nanomaterials including metal or metal oxide nanoparticles, carbon-based nanomaterials and polymers [11,12,13]. Most studies conducted the embryonic toxicity induced by nanomaterials rather than assessing the changes of larval behavior. It is necessary to perform larval behavior as well as embryonic toxicity as evaluating nanomaterials. Only a few studies investigated the assessment of SiNPs toxicity using zebrafish model [16,17]. More studies are needed to better understand the toxicity of SiNPs in both embryos and larvae of zebrafish
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